


Gathering the Many

by Queen_Mab



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Established Relationship, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Nonbinary Character(s), Original Character Death(s), Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2020-10-27 22:20:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20767850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queen_Mab/pseuds/Queen_Mab
Summary: Facing down the possibility that Heaven and Hell will join forces to attack Earth, Crowley and Aziraphale are forced to turn to the only other divine beings who might be ready to protect the world with them: the Guardians of the three other Gates of Eden, and the demons who have been assigned to them since the beginning.





	1. Chapter 1

Nestor was alone when the shock reached her.

She was lounging on her balcony overlooking the overstuffed street full of humans buying and selling trinkets. The shock burned at the ground, climbing up her leg and hitting her spine, sending coordinates directly into her brain.

_ United Kingdom. Tadfield. A graveyard. _

It was a communication meant only for the demons stationed on Earth, a communication meant to bring them all together when necessary. And everyone knew which demon lived in England.

In her home full to the brim with mementos—a chair gifted by a king here, an impeccably designed watch taken from an explorer there—Nestor wasn’t too inclined to heed the summons. No one was inclined to listen to the call of the flash bastard who fucked up the apocalypse. So she remained lounging on her fainting couch from the 1800’s, watching the world go by from her balcony, when a familiar angel marched by her home with purpose.

Nestor considered ignoring it, but she had a lot of trouble ignoring Esper. Always had, even before the Fall. So it was a fruitless effort, and it was best to just follow her and see what was happening.

Nestor always wore a niqab when she went outside. It covered her ‘problem areas’ perfectly, plus it was hand-embroidered by a girl she had been quite fond of centuries ago. She walked through the crowded street stuffed to the brim with merchants like she belonged. Esper, on the other hand, pushed people to the side with the bulk of her shoulders, wore the same simple tunic she’d had since being assigned to Earth, dreadlocks falling past her shoulders, fists at her hips, and—

“Where are you going, then?”

Even now, Esper jumped when Nestor sneaked up on her like that. Nestor would be smiling, but it was physically difficult to smile these days, so instead her mean amusement just came to her eyes instead.

Esper, to her credit, huffed and brushed herself off, glaring imperiously at Nestor. “None of your business, where I’m going.”

“Let nee guess!” Nestor held up her fingers, counting off on them. “United Kingdon. Tad’ield.  _ A gray yard. _ ”

Esper was shit at hiding her expression. Her mouth pinched, brow furrowing. “How did you know?”

“‘Cause e’ryone knows snake dick and wingding run together now, and snake dick wanted nee there too.” It hurt to grin, even to grimace, but it was the only way Nestor could get the wicked crinkles next to her eyes. “Sounds like they’re getting two gangs together, aren’t they?”

Esper pursed her lips, tucking her dreadlocks behind her ear in a way that was supposed to show her indifference. It just showed her nerves. “I don’t care what you have to say. It’s none of your business where I’m going.”

“Wingding is on the outs with your side, though, isn’t he?”

The crowds parted around them on instinct. Some humans might have noticed and wondered why, but it was only expected to the divine beings. 

“I’m not sharing information with you,” Esper said.

“You always are, whether you like it or not.” Nestor shrugged, still grinning, even as the pain of her expression ached through her whole lip and jaw. “I’d hate to niss a darty  _ you’re _ attending. See you in Tad’ield.”

And Nestor ducked into the crowds, letting them swallow her up just as Esper rose to protest.

* * *

Ion was in the middle of watching an exquisite bunraku performance when the Horn of Principalities sounded. None of the humans heard it, but it drowned out the singing for a good fifteen seconds, which left Ion cross.

But there were two hours left to the performance, so that left time for Ion to settle back into their seat and listen, watching as the puppets acted their parts and the master storytellers sang. They didn’t think about the horn for the entire rest of the performance. They knew where it came from, anyway.

It was only after the performance ended, when Ion had had a chance to go backstage to express his admiration to the performers once again and promised that they had already bought tickets to  _ Chushingura _ next week, that they walked out of the theater and actually considered the horn.

No one had blown the horn since each Principality guarding Eden was given one (of course, only  _ after _ Aziraphale mucked things up by not noticing the snake). Not even Malthael, Guardian of the Southern Gate, had blown it, even when his rival demon tied him to a stake and destroyed him with hellfire. (Though Ion had a suspicion that had more to do with Malthael having lost the horn like an idiot and less with Malthael genuinely thinking he had a chance against hellfire.)

And yet it was now that Aziraphale had already been declared a traitor in Heaven that he decided to blow the horn and call all the Principalities to him. In England, no less. Dreadful place, England.

Ion brushed their hands off, shaking their head as they walked down the sidewalk and the world lit up around them. Cars hummed past. Neon signs flashed. Ads with cute cartoon mascots advised them on the best products to buy.

Ion had to admit some curiosity. What was it that caused an angel to betray Heaven so late in the game? Were the rumors true that Aziraphale survived hellfire and never Fell? 

And would his rumored demon boyfriend be calling all demons to his side as well?

Ion grimaced at the thought of their own rival, Stygian. They’d been happily ignoring each other since Stygian fixed the mess he made with the Mongols and agreed not to disrupt more of humanity’s art. Ion had figured maybe they’d only see each other again during Armageddon as they lined up on opposite sides, give each other polite nods, and then Ion would behead him.

But perhaps it would be good to go to Tadfield anyway, if only to satisfy Ion’s curiosity. Maybe they could report back to Heaven to explain what Aziraphale and his demon were doing these days. It would be nice to see Ithuriel again. It’d also be nice to meet whoever it was that replaced Malthael. Maybe Ithuriel would kill the traitors and every demon that dared attend. That would be entertaining to watch.

Mind made up, Ion snapped their fingers. None of the humans noticed when beautiful white wings spread out at their back.

* * *

Long before the horn was blown and the signals were sent, an angel and a demon in England had a  _ long _ discussion about the wisdom of a reunion.

“Half of these people are serial killers, Aziraphale. Literal serial killers.” Crowley couldn’t even stand still after two bottles of wine. He paced up and down the bookshop, spine somehow even more wiggly than usual. “And I’m not just talking about the ones from  _ my _ side.”

“Well, what else can we do, Crowley?” Aziraphale knew better than to try to stop Crowley’s frantic pacing. Instead, he stayed at his desk, leaning against it as he watched Crowley. “You said it yourself. The next ‘big one’, as it were, will be between all of Heaven and Hell and Earth. We can’t protect it alone.”

“We could protect it easier if we weren’t looking at our backs the whole time!” Crowley said.

“We haven’t seen them in thousands of years,” Aziraphale said, and my, didn’t the time fly? “We’ve changed since then, haven’t we? They might have too. They might care about the Earth as much as we do.”

“Care about it enough to work together? Not bloody likely,” Crowley growled, flailing his hands around in a particularly melodramatic fashion.

“Well, we worked together, didn’t we?”

That stopped Crowley in his tracks. He ceased his pacing, turning on his heels to face Aziraphale. He feigned a nonchalant expression, but he’d taken his sunglasses off a bottle ago and his eyes gave him away. “Well. That’s different.  _ We’re _ different.”

“ _ I _ certainly don’t know what the other Principalities have gotten up to since Eden,” Aziraphale said. He immediately regretted the images that put in his head.

“I do,” Crowley said, his tone dark and heavy with history.

Aziraphale softened immediately, standing from his desk. “I know her, Crowley.” He crossed the room, taking Crowley’s hands in his. He tried to make it a casual thing, but physical affection was still new for them, and Crowley froze as soon as their fingers touched. Like he was scared a single movement might send Aziraphale’s hands away. “She only did what she was told to. The only time she’s ever destroyed a demon that didn’t encroach on her territory, it was because they burned one of our own with hellfire. She won’t touch you, especially while I’m there.”

“It’s not just me I’m worried about,” Crowley said. He dared to curl his fingers around Aziraphale’s.

“She’d never hurt another angel, and your former colleagues would never try to hurt an angel in her presence.” Aziraphale squeezed Crowley’s hands. “Let’s at least try. Earth has an infinitely better chance with them all behind us. If it turns into a mess… well, we’ve gotten ourselves out of worse messes, haven’t we?”

Crowley closed his eyes and sighed, focusing only on the contact between them.

“I suppose we have.”

And that’s how they ended up calling up the most powerful beings still awake on Earth, and then hanging out in a graveyard in the middle of the night between two picnic tables. Aziraphale had insisted the tables would make this meeting easier. Crowley had said that the tables really only would be useful if a fight broke out and they needed improvised shields. They decided together that they’d put them in.

Wine bottles lay in clusters by the picnic tables. Aziraphale was tempted to open one up prematurely, if only to have something to distract Crowley from all his pacing.

“My dear, you’re going to wear a ditch into the ground like that,” Aziraphale said, arching an eyebrow.

“At least it’d be something to hide in if someone starts throwing fireballs,” Crowley grumbled, looking like he was ready to crawl out of his skin and slither into the ground. Could he do that? Sometimes Crowley’s snake-like aspects carried over in weird ways to his human form.

“No one is going to throw fireballs. Probably. It’s gone out of fashion.” Aziraphale held out his hand. Like a magnet, Crowley came to his side and took it. That, at least, calmed his pacing for the moment. “I really do believe that they will surprise us.  _ We _ surprised us, didn’t we?”

“I told you. We’re  _ different _ ,” Crowley hissed.

“But perhaps not as different as you think,” Aziraphale said. “You must admit, even if we didn’t… get along so well, it’s awfully lonely to be the only immortal being on a continent. Six thousand years is a long time to be alone.”

“Not that you’d know,” Crowley said, daring to take Aziraphale’s other hand.

“Indeed.” Aziraphale’s lips curled at the corners. “I was never alone.”

“Am I interrupting something?”

The slimy, rasped voice had an immediate effect. Aziraphale jerked in surprise, suddenly aware they weren’t alone. Crowley took a breath, mouth twisting into something that tried to be a smirk but looked more like a grimace, and he spun on his heels to face the voice. They let go of each other’s hands.

“Stygian! Good to see you. How long have you been lurking?”

“What do you take me for? I’m always lurking.”

The voice slid down the back of Aziraphale’s neck like cold sweat. It was nothing like Crowley’s, and for the first time in this venture, he had an inkling of Crowley’s doubts.

A man materialized from the dark. He wore an old white T-shirt and ragged jeans, had long black hair hanging limp and stringy around his face, and had grown an uneven, oily black beard. He would have just looked like a middle-aged man who had let himself go if it weren’t for the eyes. They were goat eyes. Orange with a rectangular pupil, and his teeth as he smiled seemed just a little too long.

He wasn’t doing anything threatening, but Aziraphale’s gut clenched in his presence in a way it never did in Crowley’s. This demon was closer to the ones he met in Hell—removed from humanity, and quite comfortable with it.

“I see you got your new angel boyfriend with you,” Stygian said, raking his fingers through his beard. Aziraphale gave him an awkward nod with a grimace, like he was trying to politely acknowledge that he was indeed there. “I have to hand it to you—you have balls to call us all up, Crawly.”

Crowley wrinkled his nose. “It’s Crowley, now. I changed my name, oh… two thousand years ago?”

“They’re calling you worse names downstairs,” Stygian said, meandering to the picnic table before sitting down. He sat three feet away from Aziraphale, and yet his presence still made the balmy autumn night uncomfortably hot. “But I wanted to see it for myself. See what all the fuss is about. Maybe figure out why you went turncoat.”

“Oooh, are we getting started with gossit?”

Another demon materialized from the darkness. This one was a woman, her entire head save for her eyes hidden by an opaque veil carefully embroidered with intricate, abstract ocean imagery. Betta fish swam by her dark eyes and coral grew from the hems around her shoulders. The rest of her outfit was similarly artistically lavish, with a bright blue oceanic-print dress that flared at her knees and had an extra frill reminiscent of a second skirt around her hips. Honestly, she could pass perfectly well for a human woman, but the smell of sulphur lingered in another plane, alerting Aziraphale to her nature. 

“Nestor? You’re the one they replaced Asmoth with?” Crowley said.

“Yeah, that’s old news, snake dick,” Nestor said, her speech carrying an odd quality that sounded like no accent Aziraphale had heard before. She swept to the picnic table, knocking her fist on Stygian’s shoulder in recognition. Stygian wrinkled his nose at her. “Any ‘ooze?”

Aziraphale picked up a wine bottle and offered it to Nestor. “Of course. Care for a glass?”

“Don’t need one, wingding.” Nestor snatched up the bottle, perching on the table with her shoes on the bench, snapping her fingers once to remove the cork, then again to make a big bendy metal straw appear in the bottle. She awkwardly fed the straw over the hem of her face covering under her eyes. Aziraphale tried not to be horrified.

“Are you going to take that thing off?” Crowley asked.

“Are you going to take oth those stu’id glasses?” The straw rattled against Nestor’s teeth as she spoke.

Crowley’s face screwed up a little before he gave a little nod and a shrug. “Alright, fair enough.”

“You’re infuriating to listen to as always, Nestor,” Stygian said, picking up a bottle of his own.

Nestor held up her middle finger. “’Uck you.”

“None of the angels have arrived yet,” Aziraphale said, keeping his voice low as he leaned in close to Crowley. “You don’t think—”

“Don’t worry adout it, wingding,” Nestor said, pausing briefly between long sips of wine. Aziraphale hoped ‘wingding’ wasn’t going to be a  _ thing. _ “Ester is on her way.”

“Esther?” Aziraphale furrowed his brow. “I didn’t know he was assigned to Earth. Doesn’t he handle intake of human souls into Heaven?” 

“Not Esther!  _ Ester! _ ”

“I think she’s saying ‘Esper,’” Crowley said, arching an eyebrow. Nestor nodded, pointing at Crowley.

“You know, the one who nade rainclouds?” Nestor said.

“Goodness, that was a long time ago,” Aziraphale said to himself. It really  _ was _ a long time ago. Before the Fall, even. “But yes, I remember now, thank you.”

Nestor wrinkled her nose before pointing more emphatically at Crowley.

“Train wingding detter. You don’t  _ thank _ denons.”

“He can’t help it. He’s an  _ angel, _ ” Stygian said, voice layered with meanness that chilled Aziraphale, and had Crowley flashing a warning scowl. Stygian said the word ‘angel’ like Crowley said the word ‘nice.’ “ _ Angels _ thank people even if they don’t mean it.”

“And you don’t  _ train _ angels,” Aziraphale said primly, frowning at the two guests in the uncertain way of a man who was wondering if he made a terrible mistake.

“I train Ester,” Nestor said, the corners of her eyes crinkling in a cruel smile.

“You do  _ not! _ ”

_ Finally _ , someone who wasn’t a demon showed up. Aziraphale wasn’t even upset that it was the one angel he knew the least of the three. Esper marched up the dirt road, looking like she was trying to be graceful but her fierce glare at Nestor belied any grace she had. Her black hair formed dreadlocks swept into a rough ponytail, her feet were clad only in simple slippers, and she wore a white tunic that seemed to glow in the dim light. Esper’s fashion sense was much like Aziraphale’s when he had first started on Earth. It was appropriate, considering she was the newest angel on the team.

“Ester! You’re here now,” Nestor said, the corners of her eyes crinkling further as she grabbed another bottle of wine and offered it to Esper. “Take the wine. Let’s ‘ury the hatchet.”

“You turned that wine into vinegar,” Esper said with the certainty of someone who had absolutely fallen for that before.

“I would nether,” said Nestor in the voice of someone who absolutely would, taking a sip of her own wine through the straw.

Esper snapped her fingers and Nestor immediately started choking, ripping the straw from her face cover and cursing as she poured out all the liquid in her wine bottle, which now smelled strongly of vinegar.

Crowley sent a Look at Aziraphale. Aziraphale was determined not to meet it.

“Esper! So lovely to see you after all these years,” Aziraphale said, crossing the clearing to greet her properly. Esper’s back was ramrod straight, and her eyes held the same level of appraising criticism that Gabriel’s or Michael’s did. Yet Esper still took Aziraphale’s hand between hers. It was a victory of its own. “I’m sorry I haven’t had the chance to properly welcome you to Earth. I never really got around to it before, you know…”

“Two thousand years fly by fast,” Esper agreed, shaking his hand before letting go. She spared a look at the rest of the clearing, brow furrowing. “So… it’s true that you’re cavorting with demons.”

Aziraphale cleared his throat while Stygian and Nestor nodded emphatically. “Well, I’m not sure if  _ cavorting _ is really the right word.”

Crowley swept closer, shoulder to shoulder with Aziraphale as he crossed his arms, making a little ‘get on with it’ gesture. “We’ve got important things to do, so if you want to be sanctimonious, get it out of your system now.”

Esper scowled at Crowley, taking a step back as he approached. It was like she was worried he’d get her tunic dirty. Had Aziraphale ever treated Crowley like that? “I’ll be sanctimonious when I want to be. Why did you two even call us here?”

“I’d like to know that too,” Nestor said, raising a hand as she snapped her fingers to refill her bottle of wine.

“Isn’t it obvious? They want us to go turncoat with them,” Stygian said, swirling the remaining wine in his bottle.

Esper jerked her head back like she’d just smelled something awful, sending a look that held all of Heaven’s judgment to Aziraphale. Aziraphale shrank, uncomfortably smoothing his jacket, which only made Crowley’s hackles rise.

“Is that true? You want us all to go against God?” Esper said.

“Already did that,” Nestor said as she fed her straw through her covering again.

“Not God! I’d never betray the Almighty,” Aziraphale said, appalled at the very idea.

“God’s not the same as Heaven,” Crowley said, too much acid on his tongue. “Maybe you haven’t been here long enough to—”

“Are we going to fight already? Because I was hoping we’d at least wait for Ion to show up,” Stygian said between gulps of wine. Aziraphale put a hand on Crowley’s arm, clearing his throat. Crowley did not relax, but he did shut up, glaring at Aziraphale.

“I… I understand your hesitation,” Aziraphale said, striking the most reasoned tone he could. This was a fellow angel. He could speak her language if he only  _ tried. _ Esper’s arms crossed and she stared at him with all the judgment of an archangel. He wondered if he ever made Crowley feel this way. “I hesitated too. I thought that maybe all I needed to do was ask for Her instructions. But She gave us free will and a conscience for a reason, and the Archangels were never meant to replace those.”

“We’ve already  _ been _ through this,” Esper said, glaring at him while she rubbed her temple. “Don’t you remember? Big war? Half of the angelic host dropping from the sky into some sulphur and coming out with animal parts?”

“Sorry, can you say that louder? I think I just heard you say you renender the Thall!” Nestor snapped. Esper ignored her.

“But  _ I _ haven’t Fallen,” Aziraphale said. That got everyone’s attention. 

“That’s the runor,” Nestor said, one eye narrowing as she shifted her focus back on Aziraphale. “I don’t see any white wings.”

“I wanted to hear about that, too,” Stygian said, tossing his empty wine bottle at a tombstone. It shattered into glittering pieces, provoking disapproving looks from Esper and Aziraphale. “See for myself.”

“Show us the wings!” Nestor said, raising her bottle like a call to action.

“Do I look like I— _ fine. _ ” Aziraphale gave a long-suffering sigh before rolling his shoulders and pulling his wings from the pocket dimension they hid in. 

It was always such a natural thing. He almost forgot he even had wings half the time, given how much he hid them. They weren’t there, and then suddenly they were, big and white and feathery as ever. But despite the fact that everyone in the clearing had wings of their own, they stared at his like they were a Gutenberg Bible.

Esper sat down far away from Nestor. “Fine. I’ll hear you out.”

“Oh, thank you,” Aziraphale said, softening immediately as he put his wings back in their pocket dimension. If he had known convincing her would be that easy, he’d have kept his wings out from the beginning. “You know, I really am quite glad you came. It seems you’re the only angel that did.”

“Ion’s probably coming,” Stygian said. “You just called us during their  _ theater time. _ They’d ignore Armageddon if it happened during a show.”

“Well, we’ll never know now, will we?” said a new voice. Aziraphale knew that cool, slightly irritated tone, even if he hadn’t heard it in thousands of years. The fourth guest had arrived, tapping up the hill in smart glossy shoes that somehow remained untouched by the grave dirt.

Aziraphale hadn’t seen Ion more or less in six thousand years, and time had changed their sense of fashion significantly. They wore a finely tailored suit that looked just old enough to be timeless. Their long black hair was swept up in a careful braided bun held together with the most elegant silver kanzashi Aziraphale had seen. The kanzashi was sculpted white chrysanthemums with white tails that hung like feathers on the back of Ion’s neck. 

Ion had a mildly irritated look on their face as they spoke. “These two stopped Armageddon from happening.”

Ion walked right past Aziraphale even as he reached out with a smile. “Don’t get excited,” Ion said. Their voice rivaled Stygian’s for chilliness, even as they gave Stygian a polite nod in greeting. Stygian gave a polite nod back. “I’m just here to see if Ithuriel kills you all.”

“Shit!” Nestor tore her straw from her facial covering, nearly dropping her wine bottle. “Ithuriel’s coning?”

“Of course she is.” Ion picked up a wine bottle without asking, frowning at the label before snapping their fingers. It turned into fine sake. “The horn summons  _ all _ the Principalities on Earth.”

“She’s not going to hurt anyone without cause,” Aziraphale said, frowning pointedly at Ion. Really, there was no need to rustle up panic where there didn’t have to be any.

“Without cause?” Ion scoffed before snapping their fingers again. A sake glass appeared in their hand with elegantly painted bamboo patterns. “I’d say that given her track record, she’ll consider betraying Heaven and stopping Armageddon to be cause enough.”

Crowley moved on instinct, shifting so that he could easily jump between Aziraphale and Ion, like Ion themselves were threatening them. Aziraphale’s cheeks lost color. Crowley had brought up the idea, of course, but to hear another angel who knew Ithuriel just as well as Aziraphale suggest that she could possibly… “She would  _ never— _ ”

And then something rumbled in the distance.

Silence fell. It was the silence that came before a tornado, the silence that all of nature down to the very leaves respected. Stygian’s shoulders stiffened, goat eyes fixed on the dirt road leading into the graveyard. Nestor’s legs tensed, like she was ready to hitch up her dress and sprint away. Crowley and Aziraphale went rigid at the same time, their fingers brushing each other. Even Esper’s knuckles went white at her sides, casting her eyes around at the group and worrying her lip, as if deciding whether she really wanted to see them all dead.

Ion poured themselves a glass of sake.

The rumbling came again. It was steady now, traveling closer and closer up the dirt path.

But it wasn’t the dreaded thunder. As it neared, it was more like a rattle. When the rattling cleared the wall of trees into eyeshot, it wasn’t a vengeful angel. It was just a thin, wiry demon with a downcast face, dragging a cart bearing a long crate behind him. His straight, gray-flecked hair was pulled in a braid that hung down his back, but his eyes were two black voids flanked with tattoos of wide black circles dotting his face and forehead to his hairline, vaguely resembling additional eyes. Shimmering earrings that belonged more in the seventies than now dangled from his ears.

He rolled his cart into the clearing, and only when he stopped it with one bony ankle did he turn his head up to face the crowd.

“I can’t believe everyone came,” he said in a thin, weak voice.

“Who the Hell are you?” Ion said, voice completely flat.

“Ghast.” Ghast moved to the side of the cart, examining the crate sitting on top. “I replaced Fester in the Americas.”

“No way,” Crowley said, shaking his head. He stepped forward, instinctively standing between Aziraphale and the new demon. Really, Aziraphale didn’t think it was necessary. Of all the demons here, this new one looked to be the least threatening. “Ithuriel melted Fester into scrap two thousand years ago, and she goes through America’s demons like popcorn. Aren’t you the one I used to send my memos to?”

“Used to be.” It was hard to read expressions in a person who had literally no pupils (or sclera or irises), but he still managed to arch an eyebrow. “And weren’t you the demon who survived holy water? Funny person to talk about what is and isn’t possible.”

Crowley worked his jaw for a moment before jerking his head in acknowledgement. Nestor raised her hand. “Yeah, are we going to talk adout that?

“What’s in the box?” Stygian said, completely ignoring Nestor. Everyone else ignored Nestor too.

Ghast pulled a pair of worn leather gloves from his trench coat pocket. They had to be tailored. They slid over his unusually spindly fingers perfectly. “A lot has happened since Eden.” He grabbed the lid of the crate, grunting as he pushed it off. “But I thought she’d want to be here.”

Lying in the cushioned box was a woman well over six feet tall, her dark brown hair tied in two braids and her hands still on her chest, fingers wrapped around the hilt of her sword. The sword that killed all the firstborn sons of Egypt.

Ithuriel, Guardian of the Western Gate and Angel of Death, slept like the dead. 


	2. Chapter 2

**∞ YEARS AGO** **  
** **FIRMAMENT**

Before the Beginning, life was always busy. That was okay, because Esper liked being busy. She spun clouds into existence and poured water in them. The Almighty wasn’t going to use them for a while, but that was how a lot of crafts were right now, and Esper liked to throw herself into her work, happy to serve.

She could spend forever lost in clouds, but there was one angel that always yanked her out of her groove.

“Hey, Esper!”

Pomphael landed on Esper’s newest cloud, splashing water all over the both of them. Esper should have been cross about it, but instead she had to fight a smile.

“You shouldn’t splash them,” she said, more because she was supposed to than because she felt it.

“Yeah, yeah,” Pomphael said, grinning as she walked right up to Esper. She somehow looked graceful even when balanced on the springy, wet surface of a cloud. Her smile was so bright, her hair adorned with gleaming white feathers and fragments of stars snatched from the star-makers. “Listen, I have a message from head office.”

“Oh?” Esper stood at attention. Pomphael (or ‘Pom-Pom’, as Esper would sometimes call her) was probably her favorite angel in all the firmament, but she still always listened when she had a message. Pomphael was a messenger, after all.

“Yeah.” Pomphael pointed downward, off their wet cloud to a particular angel lying on the firmament, frowning at floating images as they designed what an ‘after life’ would look like, which was hard since none of them quite knew what life was yet. Esper had been avoiding looking at them, because they had been very rude to Esper in the last meeting and commented on her messy wet wings. “They say that you need to dump water on Anael.”

Esper’s serious face choked with a laugh. “What?”

“Yep. Needs to be soaked all over.” Pomphael held up her hands, grinning. “I don’t make the rules.”

“They didn’t say that!” Esper said, struggling not to giggle as hard as she wanted to.

“Who are you going to believe?” Pomphael’s iridescent eyes gleamed with amusement. “Your common sense, or me?”

Esper peeked over the edge of her cloud. Anael had been  _ really _ mean about her wings. It wasn’t Esper’s fault that her work was wet. “Soaked all over, you say?”

“Yes! From their primaries to their toes!”

“Well,” Esper said, flapping her wings to drive the cloud over Anael’s head. “I can’t disobey head office, can I?”

After dumping the entire contents of her raincloud on Anael’s head, Esper and Pomphael fled the scene, cackling as Anael cursed.

It was wonderful. It was fun and joyful and so perfect.

And it didn’t last.

\---

It started off so small. Pomphael lounged on one of Esper’s clouds as she worked, waiting for a summons by any angel that needed a message delivered. Esper sat by her, humming as she spun more of the cloud into existence, shuffling her wings to imbue it with water.

“Do you ever get bored, Esper?” Pomphael asked, combing her fingers through her perfectly preened feathers absently.

“Bored?” Esper only half-listened, caught up as she was with spinning clouds. A long time from then, she’d compare it with a cross between spinning thread and spinning cotton candy. “How could I be bored when I have you, Pom-Pom?”

Pomphael turned her head to smile at Esper, giving her a gentle punch to the knee. “You’re going to give me cavities.”

“What are cavities?”

“Something the life design department is working on. It means you’re being too sweet.” Pomphael lay back on her elbows. “But I’m being serious. It’s just the same work all day, every day, and the Almighty won’t tell us anything about what’s supposed to change.”

Something in Esper prickled uneasily. She tried to smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I don’t really think much about what God is planning. She’ll take care of us.”

“How can you know that if She doesn’t say anything?”

“I just do.” Esper fluffed her feathers, trying to dry them off. “If you’re so bored, will you help me spin this cloud? This vapor is snagging.”

Esper thought that was the last of it. She thought this was enough. She thought she thought she thought.

She was wrong.

\---

The Fall was as sudden as it was violent. Esper held a sword awkwardly, struggling to do anything with it but hurt herself. Tears streamed from her face as she shoved through the battle, preferring to swing the bulk of her arms and shoulders to knock people down than actually use the sword. For some, it worked. For others, it didn’t. Someone stabbed her in the gut.

She staggered across the clouds, holding the essence of her soul inside her stomach, keeping it from escaping between her fingers. She made it to the edge of the fight. The edge of the fight where a familiar angel had just impaled Anael.

Esper watched with her jaw open as Pomphael withdrew her sword from Anael’s chest, letting Anael collapse on the cloud.

“Pom-Pom?” Esper whispered.

Pomphael turned her gaze to her. Her eyes went wide. “Esper, I can—”

There was no chance. The clouds opened up under Pomphael’s feet, and she Fell. Esper stared at the absence she left with tears in her eyes. Someone else tended to Anael.

\---

Heaven was cold after the Fall. Cold and quiet. Most of the angels who brought any kind of color to the firmament were gone now.

When the Principalities were sent to Eden after spending eternity waiting for their purpose to be realized, they were given a small, informal send off. Ithuriel and Ion chatted merrily with their friends, Ion’s normally cool expression warm around their eyes and Ithuriel laughing loudly and smiling wide as she usually did, occasionally slapping someone on the back just a bit too hard. Malthael flexed his wings, clearly trying to show off without  _ looking _ like he was showing off as he oh-so-casually shared that it really wasn’t a big deal that they were going to be the first to see the culmination of God’s Creation. Aziraphale was stuck trying to smile and nod uncomfortably as Gabriel talked to him about instructions (something something ‘don’t let the humans eat from the apple trees’) before Ithuriel loudly said, “Don’t worry, Gabriel. We’re ready for this!” And she wrapped her arm around Aziraphale, dragging him into the much more enjoyable conversation she was having with Ion and everyone else. Aziraphale’s smile seemed less forced now.

Esper was polite. She gave her goodbyes and well-wishes. Malthael winked at her, turning down the showmanship for a moment and telling her that he couldn’t wait to see her rainclouds in action. Aziraphale’s smile was warm as he clasped her hand and thanked her for seeing them off, but really, it wasn’t necessary, because they were just a hop away and she should feel free to come down and visit and see the garden. Ion’s handshake was polite, cordial, and a little chilly, but they were always a little chilly and the corners of their eyes were soft. Ithuriel, ever the touchy one, swept everyone who dared come near into a hug, laughing as she said that they were making too big a deal of it, and really, they were going to be coming back regularly to give reports anyway.

And then they were gone. Heaven got even colder.

\---

When Malthael died, the Archangels asked for volunteers to go to earth in his stead. Esper didn’t know why she volunteered. Maybe she just was tired of all the cold and the white all around her? Maybe she wanted to escape the grim atmosphere that permeated Heaven now that one of their own had died, the first since the Fall?

The earth wasn’t cold and white. It was warm and bright and full to the brim with color, and the humans embodied energy Esper hadn’t seen since before the Fall. Humans, so many of them, smiling and laughing and cursing and stomping their feet. Making music from wood and animal skins and the beating of palms, making color from plants and animals and shells, building community and culture and  _ life _ from sand and dirt and grass and surf.

Esper didn’t really have any instructions besides ‘encourage virtue’, so she just wandered around, admiring the different people she came across and the things they made. Encouraging virtue wasn’t so hard, really. It was just a matter of nudging slightly meaner children to be kind, of nudging more stingy adults to be generous with their neighbors.

She met her demon on the shores of the Nile. The Pharaoh at the time was misbehaving, and she suspected demonic intervention. She followed the smell of sulphur to the river, to the greenery and cattails in the middle of a desert, and she found her.

P—the demon was washing her hair in the river. Her eyes had lost their iridescence, now dull brown. All that alluring shine had moved instead to the light that dangled from the lure that sprouted from her hairline, luring fish in the river to the surface for her to grab. And her teeth. Her teeth.

Esper gasped. The demon turned. They both froze.

“Es… Es… Esssss…”

Esper watched as the demon’s lips twitched, struggling, struggling to make the sound. But they couldn’t. The demon couldn’t say her name.

Esper backed up. Her heels sunk in the dirt.

“No!” The demon sprang from the water. Her wet hair slapped her back. Her eyes shined with unshed tears. Could demons cry? “It’s nee. It’s nee, Es—”

“I don’t know you.”

The demon looked so stricken, so hurt. Somehow, that melted the shock defending Esper, and all there was left was rage. Rage that ran hot in her blood, that burned away all the cold that had infected the halls of Heaven. How  _ dare _ she look at Esper like that? How  _ dare _ she look so wounded when  _ she _ was the one who betrayed them? Who ruined  _ everything?  _ Who abandoned Esper because she was  _ bored? _

“I don’t know you!” Esper spat it out, all the anger and loneliness of thousands of years burning in her voice shoving the demon back and splashing her into the water. “Now stay away from me!”

Esper stomped away. She forgot that she was trying to thwart demonic wiles in the meantime. It didn’t matter. She needed to go break something.

Her feet carried her south to a wide savannah, where the grass grew to her hips and lions had the good sense not to try hunting her. It didn’t stop Esper from chasing them and yelling for a while. The lions were pretty perturbed by the whole thing, but it made Esper feel better.

Rainclouds followed her every step, pouring unseasonable rain on the grasslands. She didn’t notice how many days passed of just… yelling at wildlife. She didn’t notice distant thunder. She didn’t notice anything but kicked dirt and confused lions until Ithuriel slammed into the ground.

“Mother of God!” Esper jumped in surprise, wheeling to face the other angel. The thunder receded as Ithuriel straightened, cracking her back and her wings before tucking them away. The rain kept pouring, soaking Esper and Ithuriel’s clothes through.

“I came to welcome you to Earth.” Ithuriel squinted up at the raincloud hovering over them both. “I take it it’s not treating you well?”

Heat rushed to Esper’s cheeks. “No, no, Earth is treating me fine.” She glared at the raincloud until it made a hasty exit.

“Mmm hmm?” Ithuriel gave an impressively skeptical look. Esper had been on Earth for about fifteen years already, but it was barely a blink to an angel. All things considered, Ithuriel had been very prompt in greeting Esper. It was kind of her.

“Well…  _ Earth _ is treating me fine. I just met the new demon that was assigned here,” Esper said, patting her wet hair, miracling it dry. “But that’s just part of the job, right? Demons.”

“Mmm. Do you need help dealing with your demon?”

Esper took a breath to say maybe, but then she paused. Now that she actually paid attention, Ithuriel wasn’t what she remembered. There wasn’t a trace of a smile on her face, not even in her eyes. She hadn’t moved to hug Esper once. Her sword was visible and strapped to her side, the hilt worn with frequent handling.

Hadn’t there been reports of Ithuriel murdering her demons? Esper imagined P—her demon held down screaming as she melted under holy water. The image dropped in her heart like ice.

“No,” she said too fast. “No, no, I can handle it. I’m sure you’re busy.”

“Not really.” Ithuriel’s voice was too flat. Her hand rested on her sword too casually. Esper found she very much wished one of the other Principalities had come to greet her instead. Even Ion’s chilly demeanor would be better than this.

The silence stretched. Esper struggled to think of something to say.

“Well, welcome to Earth.” Ithuriel didn’t clap Esper on the arm like she once would have. “Let me know if you need anything. Head office isn’t always responsive.”

Esper forced a smile. She tried to meet Ithuriel’s eyes. They were wrong. Her pupils were pinpricks. “Thanks, Ithuriel. I appreciate it. No one else has greeted me yet.”

“No one else will.” Ithuriel spread her wings. “Goodbye, Esper.”

And then she was gone in a flurry of feathers. 

* * *

**THE PRESENT** **  
** **TADFIELD**

So a demon was hauling Ithuriel around in a crate.

Esper hadn’t signed up for this. She’d just wanted to talk to Aziraphale. Figure out what went wrong, maybe save him from himself,  _ something _ , but apparently so much more was wrong. There was Ion casually talking about murder like it was nothing, and Nestor sitting there being  _ Nestor _ , and Ithuriel was unconscious hugging a sword and a demon that looked like a stiff wind would knock him over clung to her casket like a cane. What was she supposed to do? How was she supposed to fix something like this? 

“...Should we still run?” Nestor asked no one in particular. Esper resisted the urge to glare at her. Resisted the urge to acknowledge her presence at all. Nestor was always so damned dramatic anyway. Always trying to find ways to hurt Esper in petty ways, to get a rise out of her. It was all so  _ stupid _ and  _ childish. _ Esper wouldn’t let Ithuriel kill her and risk getting a genuinely nasty demonic replacement. 

Ion calmly placed their bottle of sake on the picnic table. Then they drew their sword from nothing.

“What did you do?” 

The tip of Ion’s sword pressed to Ghast’s throat. The demon shut his black eyes, entire body trembling. Ice coated the blade’s celestial steel, turning the edge cruel. The demon’s knuckles were white on Ithuriel’s casket, clutching it like rosary beads. 

“Ion, he brought her here,” Esper said, stepping closer with her hands raised. The air was suddenly so cold. “You don’t have to do that.”

“On the contrary, it seems I do.” Ion’s voice was hard and cold and dark as the kind of night a person froze to death in. Ghast didn’t open his eyes. He just turned his chin up like he’d already died. “I repeat, what did you do?” 

“That’s quite enough, Ion!” Where Esper was careful, Aziraphale sounded absolutely outraged. He pushed himself close, pressing his palm on Ion’s hilt and forcing it down away from the demon’s throat. Ion’s nostrils flared. Aziraphale glared right back with the exasperation of a woman whose book club had been canceled for the third week in a row.

“Can’t you see that the poor thing is terrified?” Aziraphale pushed his way in between Ion and Ghast, forcing Ion to back up and utterly uncaring of the fact that now he was on the business end of the sword. “Now we’re not going to get any answers if he can’t talk, so I ask that you put your sword  _ away _ .”

Ion stared Aziraphale down without shifting their expression at all. Their eyes were ice. Esper’s breath came from her mouth in a white cloud.

Crowley slid next to Aziraphale, arms crossed in the studious way people try to look relaxed when they’re ready to fight at a moment’s notice. Ghast braced himself on the crate with both hands, eyes still squeezed shut. This would turn into a fight, and Esper did not want this to be a fight. 

“Ion, please.” Esper didn’t know what worth her words were when she had only been a Principality for two thousand years, but Ion’s eyes flicked to her face. “Let him talk.” 

Ion looked back at Ithuriel, still as death in a casket. 

“Very well.”

The sword disappeared. Ion picked up their glass and sipped at the sake, not a hair out of place, like nothing had happened. Yet the air was still so cold. “Talk,” Ion said.

Ghast only just stopped himself from crumpling against the casket. He opened his eyes again, but they were suddenly all different. Instead of a black void, they were silvery mirrors. And six of his tattoos had changed from black to brilliant, reflective colors, so vivid they were like sequins. It should have been beautiful, but the effect as he turned his head and Esper saw herself in his eyes was nothing short of unsettling. 

Crowley turned his head to the demon, somehow looking completely casual despite the fact he’d just been facing down a sword. If anything, he just looked vaguely annoyed and suspicious. “How are you alive?” Crowley asked.

Ghast’s tongue darted out to wet his lips. Esper couldn’t really be sure, but she got the sense he was looking at all of them, taking them in as they took in their reflections in his eyes. 

“…She doesn’t like to kill pathetic things,” he said finally. 

The answer was colder than the air could ever be. Esper tried to match up her memory of a laughing, boisterous angel with a person who’d hunt demons for sport. Someone so enamored with death that she’d be turned off by someone who cowered. 

Stygian, up until now, had just been a silent and unsettling presence sitting at the table and drinking wine straight from the bottle. Now he slammed his wine down, wiping his hairy chin with the back of his hand. The scowl he leveled at Ghast was nothing short of pure contempt, like a dead cockroach he’d found on the floor. 

“And how the Heaven is  _ she _ still alive?” 

Esper jerked to look at Stygian. Her face was cold at the implication. Ghast didn’t seem to quite get it, and he stared blankly at Stygian. “I don’t understand.” 

“She’s asleep, you fucking idiot.” Stygian waved his arm at the crate. “She’s the biggest threat to Hell, and she’s asleep. Why haven’t you burned her already?”

Ion’s entire body moved to face Stygian, the full power of their cold fury churning in their eyes. Stygian met Ion’s gaze baring his teeth, as if to goad them in a challenge. 

If it was possible for Ghast to look even sicker than he already did, it happened now as he clung to the side of Ithuriel’s crate. Now that Esper looked, Ithuriel had been lovingly wrapped in a hand-woven shawl with patterns of white wings and lightning, her braids perfectly maintained and her crate carefully cushioned with cotton and pillows. 

“It never occurred to me,” Ghast said, voice small and weak in the clearing. 

“It nether—” Nestor, perched on a picnic table, threw back her head and laughed. She laughed rough and hard into the sky, like she was laughing in the face of God Herself. It was all brittle edges and broken glass. “Two! There’s thucking  _ two _ coutles down here! We’re halth and halth!” She slammed back down, the corners of her eyes crinkling in burning laughter as she stared down at Esper, who was staring at her with mortified horror. “Ester, ith we kiss, we can turn this into a soad odera.”

Heat rushed to Esper’s cheeks. How could a person be exactly like they once were and exactly wrong at the same time? If she’d made that joke before the Beginning, Esper would have laughed, but now they were in a graveyard and Ithuriel was unconscious and the Great Plan had gone off the rails and Nestor was just fucking  _ laughing.  _ “Are you really joking about this? Right now?” Esper demanded. “Why can’t you take anything  _ seriously? _ ”

“I’n deing serious right now! So serious!” Nestor still laughed. Still laughed in that horrible way, like instead of laughing with Esper, she was laughing at the world, laughing as it boiled in brimstone. “You just can’t tell. You need jokes to de serious when you doil in sulthur a while.” Her eyes bored into Esper, seeing through her skin and bone right into her soul. The laughter receded, and all that was left in her eyes was rage. “Not that  _ you’d _ know, Niss ‘Lawless.”

“Shut up, Nestor. No one likes the sound of your voice,” Stygian snapped. His voice was too guttural. Too intense. Like he was thinking about what it’d be like to pull out each of Nestor’s teeth one by one.

Nestor turned her gaze on Stygian. The flesh around her eyes twisted, and Esper could imagine her baring her teeth. “Thucking nake nee.”

Stygian stood from the picnic table. Esper moved between him and Nestor. She didn’t even realize she was doing it.

“I will cut out your tongue, stab it with your dismembered teeth, and fuck you with it,” Stygian said with the dread gravity of a promise. Esper’s face went cold, her mouth dry, and she dug her heels into the ground just in case. Nestor held Stygian’s gaze like she didn’t care, like this was just another moment to prove she didn’t give a shit about anything. Aziraphale let out a small yelping noise as Crowley grimaced.

“You’ve gotten creative, haven’t you?” Crowley said with clear distaste.

Ion placed their empty glass on the picnic table. Their eyes were on Ghast again. “Wake her up.”

“I…” Ghast fumbled with his trench coat. He pulled an unmarked syringe full of some clear liquid from his pocket. “This would wake her up, but you should know that she—”

Ion grabbed the syringe from Ghast’s hand and plunged it straight into Ithuriel’s breast.

Ghast moved like a spooked animal. Like he had to go now or die. He dove for the grass and scrambled under the tables.

Just as Ithuriel sprung out of the casket to grab Ion’s throat. 

* * *

Crowley knew things were going to shit as soon as Ithuriel’s babysitter dove under a table. And then the Destroyer of Egypt, wielding a  _ fucking sword _ , sprung out of her casket and slammed Ion into the ground by the neck.

There was no sense in her face. No reason in her eyes. She thrust her sword at Ion’s chest in the space of a blink. In another blink, a sword of ice caught her blade, Ion only just blocking the blow. The celestial steel screamed, lightning cracking and shards of ice flying.

“Shit shit shit shit shit—” Esper scrambled to grab Ithuriel’s arm, but Stygian beat her there. Stygian cracked a conjured pipe right on her head.

“I’ve wanted to fight this bitch for five thousand years!” he said, goat eyes wide and grin so big and crooked that it showed off all his teeth.

“No discorporations!” Ion snapped. Stygian’s blow pushed Ithuriel forward with a curse, her sword skidding on the edge of Ion’s blade. They twisted the flat of their sword, disarming both of them. Esper kicked the swords out of arm’s reach. Nestor yelped and jumped away when Ithuriel’s sword skidded close.

Ithuriel reeled onto Stygian. She grabbed the end of his pipe and shoved it into his nose. The bone shattered and Stygian stumbled back. Black blood burst from his face. Ithuriel’s wings unfurled.

“Don’t let her take o—” Ghast, still under the table, couldn’t finish his sentence before her wings flapped. The sheer power of the wind she kicked up almost threw Crowley and Aziraphale to the ground. She took off, every beat of her wings stirring the clouds. Lightning cracked, hitting a tree not far away. It illuminated her silhouette for a moment.

Satan, she was massive.

Stygian spread his wings and took off after her with a yowl, still brandishing his pipe. Ion cursed and followed, wings kicking up a cold wind.

Crowley leaned against the picnic table Ghast was currently under, eyes not moving from the churning storm in the sky. Thunder shook the ground.

“Was that  _ Narcan? _ ” he managed.

“Processed using hellfire. Yes,” Ghast squeaked.

Crowley threw his head back and yelled in wordless frustration as Aziraphale said, voice pitching up in outrage, “Ithuriel is on  _ heroin? _ ”

“Well, not anymore,” said Ghast.

“ _ Fuck. _ ” Crowley raked his fingers through his hair, watching the sky. Stygian and Ion dove for her at the same time. Lightning cracked. Stygian fell, flapping his wings to gain ground again. He should have caught the air a minute before he did, gravity almost dashing him on the trees. Ithuriel grabbed Ion by the head and swung them at Stygian. Ion’s torso cracked into Stygian.

“She’s going to discorporate them both!” Esper shouted, unfurling her own wings.

“And she’ll discordorate you too ith you—thuck.” Nestor cut herself off as Esper leapt into the sky, only just avoiding a lightning strike. “They’re all dead.”

“Crowley, what do we do?” Aziraphale asked. He was going to throw himself into the fight too if Crowley didn’t think of something.

“She’s reacting to the Narcan right now,” Ghast said from under the table. Crowley and Aziraphale stooped to look at him. Only the reflection of his weird mirrored eyes was visible. “It’s a shock that makes people aggressive. Humans inches from death will start swinging.” Ghast dared to point at the sky. “Keep her busy until it wears off. She should be fine in two minutes.”

“Yeah, but  _ we _ won’t be!” Crowley said, looking at the sky just in time to see lightning strike Ion through the chest. Their wings went limp. They dropped.

“I’ve got them!” Aziraphale shouted over the wind, snapping his fingers. Ion’s fall slowed. Esper hurtled towards Ithuriel. Ithuriel was locked with Stygian, rising unnaturally fast just before lightning cracked and she kicked Stygian in the head.

Stygian cursed, snatching her ankle, yanking her downwards to grab at her throat. Ithuriel reached to the sky. Lightning struck her hands. Her whole body flashed. The electricity traveled down into Stygian.

Stygian dropped. He left a trail of smoke. Esper reached Ithuriel, grabbing at her hands. Ithuriel cracked her fist over Esper’s cheek.

Esper screamed something, probably struggling to reason with Ithuriel. The roar of thunder was too loud. Aziraphale scrambled to slow Stygian’s fall. Ithuriel grabbed Esper by the wing, yanking it down and tearing her feathers out. Esper kicked Ithuriel in the stomach. Ithuriel rose higher and higher, yanking Esper by the wing, tearing out more and more feathers.

“Shit!” Nestor unfurled her wings and took off. Her embroidered niqab fluttered to the ground in her wake.

It was harder and harder to see. The black clouds blotted out the light of the moon and stars alike. Nestor was a glowing black sparrow compared to Ithuriel, but she sped through the sky. She slammed into Ithuriel’s back and bit her wing.

Ithuriel screamed, letting go of Esper. Esper spun downwards, only just catching herself with her weakened wings. Ithuriel beat her wings furiously. She shook off Nestor, who sped into the clouds. A single light followed her, illuminating her path. Ithuriel flew after it, gold blood and white feathers raining down.

The light led her in circles, but just as Ithuriel gained on it, Esper came from behind. Esper slammed her elbow into the wound on Ithuriel’s wing.

Ithuriel’s howl was thunder. Lightning hit the ground, and suddenly Esper was off balance, spinning in the air. Ithuriel dove. She grabbed Esper by the throat. Down, down, down—

Nestor dove after them, angled perfectly to get Ithuriel’s back. Then Ithuriel turned faster than an angel half her size. Nestor fell into Ithuriel’s other outstretched hand.

The ground shook when Ithuriel slammed both of them down by the throat, dragging them through gravestone after gravestone. Her wings swept Aziraphale and Crowley off their feet and knocked them to the ground. Stygian, already lying on the grass, sprung upwards and swung a sledgehammer at Ithuriel’s ribs. He caught her hip instead.

The bone cracked. Ithuriel screamed, letting Nestor and Esper go before gaining altitude again faster than a balloon caught over a vent. Stygian spread his smoking wings. Ion, staggering to their feet and holding their chest, punched Stygian in the face. Stygian’s jaw cracked.

“ _ No _ ,” Ion snapped, yanking the sledgehammer from Stygian’s grasp.

“She’s messing up everyone’s flying,” Crowley said, pushing himself to his feet again as he watched her soar. With a damaged wing, much less wings  _ that large _ , she had no business flying as nimbly and fast as she was. It was the same reason people kept falling out of the sky and losing their aerial footing. “She’s using lightning to change the air pressure to suit her. We can’t fight her up there.”

“We need her out of the sky and restrained until she comes to her senses,” Aziraphale agreed. “Ion, the weather—”

Ion tore their eyes from Stygian, spitting golden blood on the grass. “I’ll only make it harder for you all to fly.”

“ _ Exactly, _ ” Aziraphale said. “Make it impossible for  _ anyone _ to fly. Crowley and I can distract her until she’s grounded!”

“We can?” Crowley repeated, staring up at the biggest storm he’d seen in his considerably long life.

“We’re the only ones fit to fly left, so yes!” Aziraphale took off, and Crowley had little choice but to curse and follow.

Crowley hadn’t flown in hundreds of years, especially not in the middle of a storm up against an angel much bigger and faster than him. But he had one advantage: a partner.

Aziraphale tagged the tip of her wing first, tugging her primary feathers to force her attention. She spun on him, reaching out just as he flitted into the clouds, and then Crowley tagged her feet, pulling her ankle in another direction before diving from her knee. On the ground, Ion braced themselves against a tree before beating their wings. With every flap, the wind howled. The temperature hurtled down.

The air pressure changed suddenly, sending Crowley spinning just before lightning cracked and hit a tree. Ithuriel dove for him. Light streamed from her eyes. Crowley couldn’t catch himself fast enough to escape.

Aziraphale slammed into her back, pushing her past Crowley. He reached over her wings and punched her shoulder.

Her scream rocked the world. It pierced Crowley’s ears. He barely caught himself in the air when the pressure changed again, and Aziraphale was hit by lightning.

Aziraphale dropped like a rock. His wings left a trail of smoke.

Crowley bent his wings like he hadn’t since before Eden and dove. The chilled air tore through his feathers, biting at his face, ripping at his clothes, but it didn’t matter.

He caught Aziraphale by the hands before he hit a tree. Aziraphale looked up at his face, stunned but awake. His white wings, still smoking and scorched, spread again.

Snow fell around them, terrible snow that weighed down their feathers; dripping icy water onto the skin of their wings just to freeze again. Hail followed shortly, hail the size of golf balls. It was only a miracle that protected their heads from being hammered, but there was too much to keep it from their wings, their backs, their legs.

“Let’s bring her back to earth, my dear,” Aziraphale said, letting go of Crowley’s hands to fly up again. The hail and wet snow and lightning made it almost impossible. Crowley could barely see anything—but he could see Ithuriel, massive and illuminated by lightning, flying higher and higher towards the clouds. If she made it past them, there was nothing Ion’s weather could do to her.

So Aziraphale and Crowley both tackled her wings.

They were already covered in golden blood. The ragged chunk Nestor bit out of her topside coverts still bled. Crowley jammed his thumb in the wound as Aziraphale hit her shoulder again. Crowley’s ears rang from her scream. The sky opened up for more lightning. Aziraphale just narrowly redirected it to a tree. Another strike came down and Crowley pulled it to another tree. The hail hit all three of them, bruises blooming on skin. Ithuriel’s wings struggled, but they all were losing altitude, spinning towards the ground.

Crowley wrapped his arms around Ithuriel’s wing, forcing it as close to her torso as he could to hug that as well. The strength in her wing alone as she fought back compressed his chest, almost cracking his ribs, but her struggles against Aziraphale were distracting enough that he managed to embrace her. Then he shifted, elongating, his limbs disappearing and his embrace turning into a scaly hug as his snake form wrapped tightly around Ithuriel’s body, catching her wing, her arms, her legs and  _ squeezing. _

He had significantly more muscle as a snake for constricting, but still it was a struggle. Her skin crackled with electricity, burning his belly, and she fought. Oh, she fought. She thrashed and the sky opened and Aziraphale could barely get them safely to the ground between redirecting lightning and keeping the hail from their heads.

Aziraphale dropped them in a snowdrift. The hail on the ground almost crushed Crowley’s spine against Ithuriel’s back. Aziraphale jumped on her free wing, struggling to pin it as she twisted, Ion and a grumbling Stygian taking over redirecting the lightning that kept coming and coming and  _ coming— _

“Ithuriel.”

The struggling stopped. The lightning stopped. The snow and hail stopped.

Ithuriel, with what limited motion she had, turned her head to look at the picnic tables. Ghast had dared to crawl out from underneath, his trousers wet with melted snow as he stayed on his knees. His eyes were opaque black again. He held out a brown bottle.

“I brought chicha,” he said.

Ithuriel blinked. From Crowley’s view with his head on her breast, her eyes were clear.

“No opium?” she asked.

“You’ve been on the nod for over two hundred years,” Ghast said, somehow managing to be exasperated in the middle of the chaos. “You’ve had enough.”

Ithuriel blinked. “Alright. Maybe.” She turned her head, frowning at Crowley, then at Aziraphale, who still lay with his knees on her wing. “Aziraphale?”

Aziraphale, feathers still scorched and smoking and round bruises appearing all over his skin, managed a wave. “Hello, Ithuriel. Long time, no see?”

Ithuriel’s frown deepened, her eyes flicking back to Crowley, hissing at her breast, then to Ghast, then to Ion and Stygian spitting blood on the ground, then to Nestor and Esper groaning in the snow.

“I think I missed something,” she said.

Ion scrubbed the golden blood from their mouth, grimacing at Ithuriel. “You slept through Armageddon.”

Ithuriel looked around at the decidedly not ended world. “No I didn’t.”

“It’s a long story.” Ghast flopped in the snow next to her, holding out the brown bottle. “Crowley, you can let her go now.”

Crowley didn’t really  _ want _ to let her go, but Aziraphale moved off her wing, so he  _ supposed _ he should. He uncoiled slowly, glaring at her as only a snake could before slithering to the ground, transforming back into his human shape.

His entire chest and stomach was red and blistered with electric burns now, but it seemed that everyone except Ghast came out of this ordeal mauled. Aziraphale’s wings smoked and smelled of burnt flesh. Blood stained Ithuriel’s right wing gold, she couldn’t sit up from the bones shattered in her hip, and her skin was covered in lightning trees from all the strikes she took to bring other people down. Ion kept massaging their chest, grimacing as they delicately miracled their heart into working order again, and their shirt had burned away to reveal electrical blisters. Stygian rubbed his broken jaw, cursing as his magic made it all crack back into place and he spat more black blood to the melting snow.

“After centuries, you push me out of the one good fight I could get?” Stygian said, glaring at Ion.

Ion glared back from the corner of their eye. “Of course. You don’t understand limits. You never did,” they said, before pouring themselves another glass of sake.

Esper and Nestor rose from their snow drift, groaning. Gold and black blood leaked from their heads, their faces, their throats, their hair. Esper’s wings were ripped apart, destroyed to the point where only a full molt would heal them. Nestor coughed out white feathers and golden blood, spitting it to the ground.

Aziraphale gasped when he turned and saw Nestor’s face.

Nestor heard it, bristling. Crowley should have warned Aziraphale about this.

“Take a dicture, why don’t you!” Nestor snapped, turning away, but everyone had already seen her. It was impossible not to, especially in the dark. The long lure that sprouted from her hairline and dangled a beautiful, enticing light in front of her face illuminated her teeth. Her long, wicked, bulging teeth that twisted before her jutting jaw like a cage. Her teeth that made it impossible for her to touch her lips together, to make any kind of sound that would require lips at all.

Nestor spat out some more feathers. Esper staggered to her feet, dragging herself through the snow before rifling through the drifts. She pulled out Nestor’s discarded niqab, dusting it off and miracling away the snow and ice and mud.

Esper offered it to Nestor wordlessly. Nestor snatched it, tucking her lure back in her long lustrous hair and pulling the niqab over her face as fast as possible.

If this was the kind of damage Ithuriel could wreak in two minutes of drug-induced confusion, what could she do with a clear head? Crowley really,  _ really _ hoped she liked the idea of defecting to Earth.

Aziraphale shot an apologetic look to Nestor, but he focused on healing the bones in Ithuriel’s hip while she opened up the bottle of weird alcohol and drank way too much in one go.

“Does anyone’s head office know that we’re all meeting up in the woods somewhere?” Ithuriel asked when she’d finally had her fill.

“Well… no,” Aziraphale said, shrinking into himself and suddenly very fascinated with his hands.

“Yeah, I definitely missed something,” Ithuriel said before taking another drink.

“I think we’ve all missed something,” Ion said, finishing off their drink and glaring at Ithuriel. “Why the Hell were you drugged up and in the care of a demon?”

“I don’t know. I expected I’d be dead by now.”

“What?” Ghast said, his voice pitching high the same way Aziraphale’s did when he was outraged. “What’d you think I’d do? Set the bed on fire? Throw you in the ocean?”

“I know, it was a stupid assumption to make.” Ithuriel lay back in the snow, covering her face with her arm like she already wanted to fall asleep again. “It just would have been a feather in your cap. Hell would have stopped wanting you dead and probably given you a nice title or something if you killed me. It’d have made your life easier.”

“You see?” Stygian snapped as he struggled to heal his wings. “She agrees with me!”

“You just wanted me to do it,” Ghast said, voice darker than any other demon’s for a moment. “Kill yourself if you want to, Ithuriel. But don’t drag me into it.” Ghast paused, the darkness receding from his face, leaving him wide-eyed. “Don’t actually kill yourself. You won’t, right?”

Ithuriel didn’t answer. She didn’t even move her arm from her eyes, but she did reach out with her hand and grab Ghast by the collar, dragging him into a tight one-armed embrace that made him squeak in surprise.

Aziraphale and Crowley exchanged looks, then Aziraphale and Ion, then Ion and Esper. Aziraphale tugged at his collar, opening his mouth to speak when—

“You two again!”

Everyone froze at the new voice. Crowley flinched as he turned his eyes towards it to see the woman he’d dubbed Book Girl, flanked by whoever-the-fuck boy was with her at the Tadfield Airbase. Whoever-The-Fuck, bundled with only a light jacket and old snow boots, looked like he was ready to faint. Book Girl brandished dowsing rods, which pointed at the cluster of divine energy that was all the various angels and demons licking their wounds in a destroyed graveyard. The various angels and demons that had been too stupid to tuck their wings in yet.

“Uh.” Esper threw out her arms. Her golden-stained arms. “We’re in costume! And rehearsing a play!”

“Don’t. Don’t try. You’re such a dad liar,” Nestor groaned on the ground. 

“I am.” Esper flopped her hands to her sides with a groan. “I don’t know why I try.” 

“Oh no, there’s more of them,” Book Girl said, shoving her dowsing rods into her bag. 

“What do you mean, more of them?” Ion said, sending a very pointed look at Aziraphale and Crowley that said they knew exactly what she meant. 

“No offense, but you all look like you tried to wrestle with a bear,” Whoever-The-Fuck said, grimacing at the clearing. “Are you alright?” 

“No,” Nestor said from the ground. 

“We’re fine!” Crowley said, making a little jerking motion with his hand. “Everyone’s fine, you can go back home, none of this happened--”

“It was thundering and snowing in July,” Book Girl said. “And--is that a bite mark? Did someone bite your--”

Ithuriel twisted to look at her wing. “I think so. The last two minutes are a blur, honestly.” 

“It’s fine!” Crowley kept waving his hands. “We promise not to snow and thunder on your town again, so you can pop back off too--”

“I know you won’t, because I’m going to make sure you don’t!” Book Girl stared down the denizens of Heaven and Hell with her chin up as her boyfriend slowly looked at her in abject horror. “I have wards at my house. Wards that will keep you all from fighting and messing things up more than you already have. I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but whatever it is, you’ll do it there.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for references to drug use and suicidal ideation. 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed. Please leave a kudos or a comment if you are so inclined. Concrit is welcome! 
> 
> I have a tumblr called themadqueenmab. Feel free to contact me, or just browse my blog for the various drabble-y fics I put up there and don't get around to putting here. Thanks to AJ for looking this over for me (and generously putting up with three separate drafts to look over)!


	3. Chapter 3

**~2000 YEARS AGO** **  
** **THE AMERICAS**

Ghast was a shitty demon. He’d be the first to admit it. He didn’t have the stomach to torture dead humans. He didn’t have the ferocity to lead other demons. He didn’t even have the guile to trick people. Hell made him a low-level bureaucrat, and he wasn’t great at that either.

It was a mistake that landed him on Earth. He had mixed up some paperwork and pissed off a Duke of Hell. His offense coincided with the most recent demon assigned to Ithuriel’s territory getting melted down with holy water. He was assigned to the continents that would later be called the Americas. It was meant to be a death sentence.

Ghast was a shitty demon, and he hoped he was shitty enough to escape Ithuriel’s notice.

The Angel of Death tended to linger in the northern and central parts of the continents, so Ghast went south searching for a hiding place. He passed through many lands on foot, enjoying the open spaces, bright colors, and fresh air despite himself. Humans avoided him. Maybe they just knew what he was? But he passed by many beautiful things, many new things he’d never seen in Hell, and some humans were kind. Some tried to offer him food and chicha. He didn’t need the food, but the alcohol was nice. 

His favorite gifts were string. Not clothes nor pretty woven fabrics; just string he could wrap around his fingers and fidget with. The kind humans obliged and gave him a lot of string. They taught him a game where you could make new complicated, beautiful figures with string by wrapping it around your fingers in particular ways and passing them on to someone else. Ghast liked this game. He played it by himself as he walked along mountains, rising and falling, passing humid forests and frostbitten plateaus. 

It had been three thousand years since Ithuriel slaughtered all the firstborn sons of Egypt and earned the grim titles of ‘The Angel of Death’ and ‘The Destroyer of Egypt.’ Ghast hadn’t been there, but he’d read Crowley and Asmoth’s memos about it. Demons weren’t supposed to care about murdered children, but Crowley’s words simmered with unspoken rage. Asmoth had signed off their memo asking for instructions, because if the Opposition was slaughtering children in their beds, then Asmoth really didn’t know what kind of evil they were supposed to be fomenting.

Rumor had it that Egypt had given Ithuriel a taste for blood, because she murdered the demon assigned to the Americas within the week. Balthazar died screaming under a pitcher of holy water, the first divine creature to die since the first war. Hell flew into a rage and sent five demons after her to answer this insult—and she slaughtered all of them. She had soaked her sword in holy water, and no demon survived. Ever since, she went through all the demons in the Americas eventually. Her body count had already reached twenty. Ghast wasn’t sure if anyone had that high a body count even in the war.

Ghast had two hundred years to live, max. So he kept walking until he found a place far away from notice, a place on top of a mountain capped with snow and ice year round. By then, he had a bag full of chicha and string that never ended. He fidgeted with the string days and nights, weeks, months, years, weaving between his fingers and kicking the ice and permafrost on the ground all around him, pacing in circles until the string in his hands turned to silk and he threaded it through the ice and snow and rock into a cloudy white funnel to hide in and drink chicha. 

There were worse things in the world—the mountain top was cold, but the view on clear days was breathtaking, fresh and colorful and open in a way Hell never was. He could see rows and rows of terraced farmland, streams, exquisitely designed walls of stone, huts and alpacas. He could see the ocean sprawling on one side, and the rainforest on the other; teeming with life that didn’t trudge through dank halls seething over offenses thousands of years old. On some days, the music humans made flew up the mountain, and it was almost like Ghast could forget there was anything to be scared of.

But there were things to be scared of. Every thunderstorm had him shaking in his funnel, his soul feeling like it’d burst out of his corporation and flee back into Hell. But it couldn’t do that. Running back to Hell would just as soon mean death. He was lucky that Hell expected him to die, or else they’d already be chasing him for slacking off on the fomenting discord front. As it stood the silence stretched, tighter and tighter as solitude made it harder and harder to survive it.

So he sent a message to Asmoth. He knew from his and Stygian’s memos that opium was popular for anxiety. He wanted it.

Stygian was cruel, and Crowley was clever; but Asmoth was vengeful, and took personal offense at Ithuriel murdering demons without consequence. Ghast figured Asmoth would do anything to help a demon facing her, and he was right. Asmoth sent him the opium. They even included a pipe. It would be kind, were they not demons. Ghast didn’t insult Asmoth with a thank you.

The opium made the silence less painful, and it dulled the crushing anxiety in his chest.

So Ghast stayed perched on top of a mountain, overlooking the progress of tiny humans and the vast world around them, smoking, drinking, and playing with string. If he weren’t utterly alone and constantly contemplating the specter of death, it’d be paradise.

And then Asmoth murdered Malthael.

No one told Ghast. No one had to. He felt it. The sudden absence, the tilt of a scale, the loss of a divine presence on Earth. And then the sky went black and thundered with angelic wrath. Ghast shook in his funnel, fidgeting with his string and making more and more intricate patterns between his fingers. He watched the sky. A streak of light so bright that Ghast had to shut all of his eyes scorched the stars on its way to the African continent.

Was Asmoth going to try to fight her? They were going to die. And then she’d still be angry, and she’d find Ghast and kill him. Would she try to hunt down Crowley and Stygian too? Would they try to kill their angels so they don’t die alone?

Was this the start of another war?

Ghast tied knots. Knot after knot after knot. Balthazar. Abraxas. Clavicus. Jabor. Tirek. Khepri. Malfegor. Sylathus. Tathamet. Vyers. Withengar. Yaksha. Wormwood. Seloth. Ramuthra. Quasit. Paimon. Narvarog. Mephisto. Fester. Now Asmoth.

Soon, Ghast.

He tied all their names in knots, a dangling memorial to the demons Ithuriel destroyed, and Ghast felt it when Asmoth melted. It made the gap in divine presence wider, bigger, but more balanced. And then the light came back across the sky.

Fuck smoking. Ghast was just going to eat his opium.

The world floated away. His shakes were gone, and that ever-present dread disappeared even as the floral taste lingered and the tar stuck to his teeth. There was no more pain, no biting cold nor blistering sun nor centuries of festering loneliness. No fear. Nothing but a bubble of bliss and the beauty of the Almighty’s creation laid before him.

And that was how Ghast met the Angel of Death: high as a fucking kite.

Thunder roared in his ears, so powerful that it shook the mountains. Lightning lanced across the sky. Ithuriel’s light streaked through the stars and then hit the ground.

There she was. In the haze of bliss, Ghast could appreciate her resplendence. Lightning crackled in her eyes. Thunder hummed in her glowing white wings. Her sword, dripping with the remains of Asmoth, burned with electricity at her side. Her clothes, colorful like the clothes of the humans down below, were burnt and speckled with angelic blood and demonic remains.

“You,” she said, her voice rolling like thunder as she raised her sword.

“Me.” Ghast faced down his death, and yet he could not be afraid. He should have started eating opium years ago. “So you’re my killer.”

“I am.” As she approached, her feet left blackened tree patterns in the permafrost. Maybe she wouldn’t even need holy water. Maybe she could just hug Ghast very tightly and electrocute him to death. “You helped them plan the murder, didn’t you?”

“I had nothing to do with Malthael’s death,” Ghast said, though he didn’t expect to be believed.

“You don’t deserve to live when Malthael’s dead. None of you do.”

Ghast ran his fingers over the knots in his string. All the demons he would join soon. “Duke Lamia will be so happy. She’s been waiting for you to kill me since I got here.”

The permafrost stopped crackling under her feet. Ghast glanced at her face. She had stopped moving. “What do you mean?”

“I mean she’s been waiting for you to kill me.” Ghast somehow was able to smile. It was a distant smile. The smile of someone who wasn’t entirely there at the moment. “I messed up some paperwork. I’m not a good bureaucrat. So she assigned me here. It’s all political if she puts me on trial in Hell and sentences me to holy water, but not if you’re the one who does it.”

Distantly, he realized he had opened all eight of his eyes. He could see her from so many angles. The way the cold air turned her cheeks red. The way her mouth parted just a little. The recession of thunder from her voice. “How long have they been using me as an executioner?”

His eyes slipped, shifting eight black voids into mirrors. Six multi-colored jeweled eyes on his forehead and temples, but two perfect mirrors mounted in his sockets. It just happened sometimes when he was so scared or so relaxed that he forgot to hide the mirrors. The color drained from Ithuriel’s face as she stared at his eyes. “Since…” he counted the knots on his string, whispering names. “Since Tathamet. Do you remember them? They could turn into a crow. You could get them to tell you anything if you gave them something shiny. They were too honest with Lamia, and a rival Duke sent them here. And… and Vyers, she was the one with the teeth. She could turn into a crocodile. She took a shine to a human soul and went too easy on them in Hell, so she was sent to you. Then Withengar. Withengar could turn into a warthog. He had the tusks?” Ghast gestured around his face to illustrate. “He was a dick, and he went lame when Balthir set a hellhound on him. The Dukes thought he’d be good cannon fodder for two centuries. And… oh! I think I know who’ll replace me. You’ll see if I’m right.”

Ghast leaned in, as if telling her a secret. He sort of was. He probably shouldn’t be so gossipy with his killer, but… well, it was really lonely on a mountain. And she couldn’t look away from his many, many eyes.

“Lamia has been trying to fuck Belial for at least five centuries, and she’s been getting impatient. If the next demon has these big green fish eyes, that’s Belial, and you’ll know she didn’t fuck Lamia.”

Ghast waited for a laugh. Most demons would laugh. But Ithuriel’s lips were blue, and her dark complexion had gone pallid and waxy. Ghast frowned. Concern was distant as anything else, but this seemed like the kind of thing he should be concerned about.

Her clothes were burned. Through one of the holes scorched through, there was a blackened, mottled burn visible on her shoulder. Ghast hissed in sympathy. He didn’t think that would ever go away. “Is that a hellfire burn? I guess Asmoth got you a bit after all.” Hellfire burns never healed, at least not on angels. He picked up what remained of his opium, offering it to Ithuriel. It was hard and tacky in the cold. “Just eat this. It makes everything better. No pain. I’ve been using it so I wouldn’t be so scared of you finding me, but I won’t need it anymore.” Ghast tapped his temple. “Just please kill me before it wears off, okay? I’m a coward. I don’t want to die afraid.”

Ithuriel opened her mouth. Then she closed it. Her eyes didn’t move from his. From the mirrors on his face. “I…” There was no thunder left. Her voice was sick. “I think I made a mistake.”

She dropped her sword. It sank into the permafrost. Then she spread her wings and flew away.

Ghast was alone again.

Ghast was still alive.

\---

So now Ghast had a sword stuck in the middle of his mountaintop that he couldn’t touch for fear of immediate painful death, and he might have given the Angel of Death an existential crisis. He wasn’t sure how exactly he got to this point, but he blamed the opium.

Naturally, he kept smoking it.

It was ten years before Ithuriel returned to his silken funnel, which was really a heartbeat by angelic standards. There was no thunder nor storm to announce her presence, so there was no time to swallow a handful of opium to calm the nerves. When she landed on his mountain top, ground shaking and ice groaning, he screamed and scuttled into his funnel, slamming its door shut.

Ghast had had more dignified moments in his life.

Ithuriel perched in the permafrost, wings tucked at her back but not disappeared, looking less like an Angel of Death and more like a one night stand coming back after ghosting for two weeks because they realized you still had their jacket. “Sorry, I… I shouldn’t leave my sword in front of your home.”

She grabbed the handle of her sword, which had sunk nearly entirely into the ground, and she pulled it out with no effort. The blade cracked with barely contained lightning, and inside his little woven home, Ghast slapped his hand on his mouth to stifle a scream.

Oh, she was coming for him. She was coming for him, and he couldn’t be calm, not like last time, the opium had been calm for him, now he stared down death and he didn’t want to die not yet not now he’d been good he’d hidden he hadn’t done anything to make her mad he didn’t want to die he didn’t want to know what holy water felt like not yet not yet not—

Ithuriel sheathed her blade at her hip. She grimaced at the door of Ghast’s funnel. His weavings weren’t so thick that he couldn’t see her from inside. And if he could see her, she could see him.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” she said. There was no thunder in her voice. She sounded small in the quiet of the mountaintop now. “I was hoping we could talk. I have questions.”

Ghast kept his hand on his mouth, but the urge to scream receded.

She stared at the door of his funnel, sighing through her nose. “What can I do to make you come out and talk to me?”

Ghast’s mouth was dry. He wanted to tell her that he’d be okay coming out when she was halfway across the continent, but she was being surprisingly not murder-y and he wanted to keep it that way.

“Put the sword away. Far away,” he managed after a moment. “And give me a second to smoke.”

“Fine.” She snapped her fingers, and the sword and sheath disappeared from her hip. She could probably summon it back with another snap, but it was the thought that counted, and the thought was that there wasn’t a sword within ten feet of Ghast that could destroy him with a touch.

Ithuriel swept out her white linen skirt and sat down on the ground. She waited silently, overlooking the view that Ghast had spent centuries admiring, as Ghast fumbled with his pipe to light the opium. It took him a good twenty minutes of sucking on his pipe before the fluttery anxiety in his chest calmed down. Ithuriel just leaned back on her hands, eyes on the ocean, now glittering with the sunset.

Ghast pushed his door open. Ithuriel’s ears perked, but she kept her eyes on the ocean. He shambled out of his funnel, kicking the silken door shut with his foot.

Without the lightning lancing across her body and the murderous intent in her eyes, it was hard to believe that this person was responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of children, plus twenty-one demons. She was tall, broad, around six and a half feet tall and designed with a warrior’s physique in mind. But when she stared at the ocean, the twilight shadows falling over her face and the wind rustling her long loose hair and feathers, she just seemed tired.

Ghast sat far out of arm’s reach, but he did offer his pipe. “What did you want to ask about?”

Finally, she turned her head to face him. Her eyes—golden amber when they weren’t glowing with heat lightning—flicked down to his pipe, then to his face. She took his pipe silently. “A lot of things. I want to know more about you and the demons I killed.”

Ghast frowned. “Why?”

“You knew all their names. I didn’t know one name.” Ithuriel looked out at the ocean again. There was that tired look again. “I should know the names of people I kill.” She sucked on the end of the pipe, sweet floral smoke curling from her nostrils as she wrinkled her nose. “How long have you enchanted this opium to be everlasting?”

“However long it’s been since you killed Fester.”

Ithuriel grimaced, taking another puff from the pipe before offering it back to Ghast. She didn’t lean her body closer to do so. She was still out of arm’s reach. “Which one was Fester?”

“The last demon assigned to the Americas?” Ghast gestured to his head as he accepted the pipe. “He had the antlers that were always shedding velvet?”

“Oh, yes, him.” Ithuriel’s grimace smoothed. “Him I don’t feel sorry for. I caught him eating children.”

“Gross.” Ghast wrinkled his nose. “But that sounds like Fester.”

Ithuriel drummed her fingers on her knee. She contemplated her own hand for a moment. “What did he do to be sent to me?”

Ghast wished he knew why she was asking these questions, but he was caught between wanting her to leave as fast as possible and basking in just being able to  _ talk _ to someone again. “He messed up some temptation or other, I think. He was supposed to convince one clan to steal from another, but instead they banded together to cast him out. He was always heavy-handed.”

“How do you know all this by heart?” Ithuriel said.

“I was a bureaucrat. Everyone sent memos to me. I’m not good at remembering to file things, but I’m good at remembering what everyone said to me.” Not quite as good as Nestor, the favorite to replace Asmoth—her memory for names, faces, and stories stretched as long as the Almighty’s—but Ghast’s memory for memos was still good, and he’d had little else to dwell on while he hid out on a mountain.

“And you’ve been up here for over two hundred years? Not doing… anything? Aren’t your superiors angry at you by now?”

Ghast shrugged, the gesture easier as more opium clouded his head. “They gave up on doing any evil work in the Americas. They’re just waiting for me to die.”

Ithuriel frowned, her brow furrowing and her mouth twisting. “I don’t know how I should feel about that.”

“Feel proud. You’re good at your job. I can’t say the same.”

“I’m not sure being good at my job is good,” she said under her breath.

“What was that?” Ghast said.

“I said I want to hear about the other demons I killed.”

It was a long conversation. She wanted to hear about each and every demon, including the ones who were sent to kill her. Some she shrugged off quickly, like Fester. Others, she mulled over. She’d only  _ suspected _ that demon of stirring up plague. She’s only  _ suspected _ that other one of convincing a king to violently uproot various communities for the sake of efficiency. Sometimes her suspicions were confirmed by memos Ghast remembered reading. Sometimes they weren’t.

They passed the pipe back and forth. Despite the staleness that came with constant prolonging magic, it still worked, and as the night stretched, they lay on their backs and stared at the stars as they spoke.

It was the clearest view of the stars either of them had ever seen since the Fall. The Milky Way, so lovingly crafted by angels that had Fallen long ago, swam across heaven. Ghast had heard that humans had found many pictures in the sky, that they had stories for each one. He wished that he could hear some of them one day.

“What’s your name?” Ithuriel asked suddenly, after they finished discussing Mephisto, a demon who really  _ had _ started a war between people in the north.

“Does it matter?” Ghast asked. The opium was a cloud in his head, gradually separating his soul from his corporation, threatening to let him float up into the stars he so admired.

“Do you know my name?” Ithuriel asked.

“Of course,” he said.

“Then it matters to me,” she said.

There was nothing in her voice that made him afraid of not answering—at least, nothing that penetrated the haze of smoke. He answered not because he was scared, but because she asked.

“Ghast,” he said.

“Ghast,” she repeated. “And you turn into a kind of… spider?”

“What gave it away?” he asked, gesturing to his eight eyes and waving vaguely at his funnel.

There was a huff. A puff of air. Something that could be generously called a chuckle. She made the noise before Ghast realized he was being sarcastic with a mass murderer. “What kind of spider?” she asked.

“Maybe I’ll show you one day,” Ghast said.

Lying on the ground, frost dusting his hair and clothes, he could feel the world spinning under him. Feel the curvature of the globe pressed to his back.

“Why do you care so much to know their names?” Ghast asked as the world turned.

“Because I thought I was doing the right thing by killing them, and now I realize I was doing Hell’s work for them.” Her voice was hazy too. Probably the drugs. Ghast wondered if she could feel the earth’s rotation too.

“None of the other angels on Earth destroyed their demons,” Ghast said.

“They’re different.”

“Why?” 

“They just are.” Something closed in her voice. Something the drugs weren’t strong enough to keep open. “If I didn’t do the right thing, I need to remember that.”

“You’re an angel. Can you do a wrong thing?”

“You were an angel, once.”

The blunt statement of fact made something in Ghast squirm. The smoke destroyed the feeling quickly.

“You should know that angels can do bad things. Good isn’t something you are. It’s a choice you make,” said Ithuriel.

“Is evil something you are?” Ghast asked.

“You tell me. Are you evil?”

“I’m not sure I should answer that question.”

Ithuriel sighed through her nose. “I don’t blame you.” She turned to prop herself up on her side, tearing her gaze from the stars to look at Ghast instead. “I’m not going to kill you. Not unless you do something to deserve it. I assumed you helped Asmoth kill Malthael, but… apparently I’ve been making a lot of bad assumptions.”

“What counts as something that deserves death?” Ghast asked.

“I’ll let you figure that one out.” Ithuriel said, pushing herself to her feet as the stars faded and predawn light filtered over the horizon. “Thank you for indulging me, Ghast.”

She wasn’t entirely steady on her feet. Ghast frowned, pushing himself on his elbows. “You probably shouldn’t fly after smoking that much.”

“I have work to do. If I come back, I’ll bring something fresh.” She spread out her wings. They caught the light of the sunrise, every little edge of her white feathers shimmering with the frost that had gathered there. It was like catching tiny rainbows in her wings.

Then she took off, arcing through the sky… and smacked into the side of the next mountain over.

Ghast winced in sympathy. Well. She was probably fine.

Ghast had things to smoke and think about anyway.

\---

Was he evil? Was evil something he was or something he chose? It was an interesting question.

With the (shaky) assurance that Ithuriel wouldn’t kill him for existing, Ghast dared to go down the mountain again. The air was thick and too warm lower down, but he figured he could get used to it eventually. Once again, some people avoided him. Some people were kind. This time, he managed to figure out that the eyes might be what tipped them off to his nature. He couldn’t really fix that, but he could keep his excess eyes closed and tell people that he was born with a terrible affliction, and that seemed to calm the nervous ones down. When his six extra eyes were closed, his face just looked pockmarked.

Humans were interesting creatures. Ghast rather liked their company, actually. They weren’t miserable and deliberately cruel like demons, and they weren’t potentially homicidal like Ithuriel. (For the most part, at least.) Humans were aware of how little time they had on Earth, and they were excited to make the most of it. They were happy to invite a stranger into their homes to share chicha with them and their families. They were happy to let Ghast admire the pretty multicolored pots they made for market, or the wool they shaved from their llamas, but it was the weaving that he liked the most. The first family he met that had a loom free of any project, he sat down at their loom all night and just  _ worked. _ This was one thing he was good at. Thin fingers, shifting his weight, doing so much more than just making a funnel and playing with string. In exchange for this inexplicable nighttime labor (which produced an entire new outfit for the mother of the family), Ghast got a jug of the best chicha he’d had in centuries. To be fair, he’d been magically extending the last batch for said centuries, so that wasn’t saying much.

Down in the desert not far from the foot of his mountain, the humans were carving beautiful designs into the very earth. Geometric designs representing animals, made by moving the black stones that sat on top of the desert and revealing the light sand beneath. It was a marvel of engineering and teamwork. Ghast perched on the side of a mountain for two years, just watching the lines grow. He didn’t think Hell could wrangle a whole bunch of demons into doing something like that.

He returned to his funnel after a decade or so of exploring, but he came back with a loom and a relationship with the people that lived further down the mountain. Not everyone really bought the whole ‘human with afflicted eyes’ story, but no one minded having a person around ready to take their processed wool and turn it into woven cloth for nothing but chicha and the occasional evening of welcome company. They tried to offer him coca leaves in exchange, but Ghast didn’t want a stimulant. They could keep their coca leaves to keep them awake and tend various maladies both physical and spiritual; he was happy with chicha and opium.

Human attitudes changed about him when decades passed and he remained the same, but not by much. Now, the occasional evenings of hosting him at homes seemed to have more gravitas than before, and they tried harder to give him good chicha. Ghast wouldn’t complain about it, so long as they still gave him string and someone to talk to.

The third time Ithuriel came to his mountaintop, he didn’t even flinch. She landed lightly on a rock, perched and dressed in beaded buckskin as he wove a shawl with a complex black wing pattern. He had set up his loom outside of his funnel today, as the sun shone bright, darkening their russet skin and glittering on the calm ocean for him to admire.

“Did you make these?” Ithuriel came down from her perch after a solid ten minutes watching him weave, remaining out of arm’s reach but admiring the pile of woven cloth he had gathered next to him. The shawl on top of the pile was, of course, the one shawl with a pattern of white wings and lightning repeating over and over. Ghast did his best to not be self-conscious as she eyed it with interest.

“It’s boring to do nothing but smoke and drink,” Ghast said as way of explanation, forgetting for a moment that perhaps angels didn’t hold the same disregard for personal interests as demons did.

“I’m sorry to hear that, because I brought some good opium,” Ithuriel said, shifting her wing to show him a bag.

Ghast perked. Ithuriel didn’t smile, but the line of her mouth softened. “I’ll finish this shawl in a second.”

He jerked his head towards his pipe, sitting on a rock and gone cold after two hours without a hit. Ithuriel got the hint and picked it up, snapping her fingers to magic the pipe clean before packing in the new opium.

“Did you learn how to weave from the humans?” she asked as the shawl grew longer and longer and its pattern more intricate.

“No. I’ve always known how.”

Ghast glanced at Ithuriel from the corners of his eight eyes. She watched him patiently, even as she packed the pipe, a question in her eyes.

“I wove together strands of cellulose and embroidered colors on plants. That was my job, before.” Ghast focused on his fingers as he worked. Long, spindly fingers. Some demons only had hooves. He was glad God let him keep his fingers. “Poppies were one of mine. Did you know flowers have their own unique patterns in ultraviolet light? I can’t see those colors anymore.”

The thought hit him in a hollow place in his chest that he didn’t realize still existed. It was taboo in Hell to talk about things before the Fall. No one wanted to remember what they used to be. He didn’t know how angels felt about the topic, but Ithuriel listened to him with her whole body. Her eyes were unblinking and on him, her body leaning forwards, her ears perked.

“Poppies are still beautiful, even if we can’t see all your work.” She snapped her fingers. The pipe smoldered. “And they’ve eased so much suffering.”

She held out the stem to Ghast. He leaned in, taking it between his teeth. He filled his lungs with flowery smoke.

“To poppies,” Ithuriel said as she withdrew the pipe, taking a long drag herself.

“To poppies,” Ghast repeated distantly. The opium was so fresh it was bitter, and the smoke numbed his mouth, his throat, his mind. “Did you magic this stronger?”

“Miracle. It’s a miracle when I do it,” she said. Her pupils were already constricting. “I like it strong."

Ghast nodded vaguely. Who was he to complain about a good high? Maybe the next shawl would have a poppy pattern. The locals wouldn’t know the significance, but everyone knew a flower when they saw one.

“Did you need something from me?” Ghast asked as he neared the end of the shawl, now covered in interlacing black wings. “Or is this… social?”

“Would you object to a social visit?” she said, her voice hazy as she leaned back against a rock, stretching her wings out before tucking them to her back.

“I don’t know,” Ghast said, perhaps too honestly. “I’m still getting used to the idea that you don’t plan to kill me. Do demons and angels even do social visits? That’s against the rules, isn’t it?”

“It is, but that doesn’t stop a lot of people,” Ithuriel said, taking another lazy drag of the pipe.

“Really?” Ghast perked, even as the smoke wove cobwebs in his mind. “No one said anything in the memos.”

“Do you send a memo to your superiors talking about all the rules you broke?”

Ghast considered, then jerked his head in acknowledgement. His head swam. Moving it felt delayed, like the cobwebs in his mind were catching water and dragging his brain behind his skull. Even so, his fingers were able to finish the shawl, pulling it from the loom. “Who’s been meeting up?”

“Us, for a start.”

Ghast rolled his many eyes. There wasn’t much of an effect without any sclerae, which was for the best. His brain helpfully informed him about a minute too late that he shouldn’t roll his eyes at the Angel of Death. “You know what I mean.”

“Maybe I’ll tell you some time,” she said, offering him the pipe. He accepted it. He was in no position to press her for gossip, anyway.

This wasn’t what he had in mind when he was assigned to the Americas, but considering he had had imminent death in mind, this was an improvement. It wasn’t like he had any favor to lose in Hell.

“Don’t your superiors check on your memos? Upstairs is supposed to be more organized, isn’t it?”

Ithuriel wrinkled her nose, a dark expression coming to her face as she stared at the sky. Past the haze of opium, anxiety flickered in Ghast’s chest. “I stopped sending memos centuries ago. They never check on me.” Bitterness nipped at her voice. “If your superiors have already given you up for dead, then we’re really on our own.”

On their own. Held accountable to no one.

“That works for me,” Ghast said slowly, keeping his eyes on Ithuriel’s expression. “I like Earth better than Hell anyway.”

Ithuriel’s face smoothed. Not all the darkness left, but most of it. Enough of it. “I like Earth too.”

“Heaven doesn’t have enough color,” Ghast dared. “That’s why I made my flowers so colorful.”

“You’re right. All that white hurts the eyes. I don’t know how everyone stands it.”

Ithuriel reached out her wing. It was longer than her arms, nearly longer than her body. The tips of her primary feathers brushed the shawl on top of Ghast’s pile of textiles. The shawl with the white wing and lightning pattern on it. “Could I have this? I can find something nice to trade you.”

Ghast’s face colored. “I was hoping you didn’t see it.”

“Of course I saw it. It’s right there.”

“Sometimes people pretend they don’t see things that are embarrassing.”

“Why would it be embarrassing?” Ithuriel tilted her head to look at him, brow furrowed. “It’s pretty. You’re good at weaving.”

“I know I am.” Ghast frowned, sliding away from his loom and finally sitting near Ithuriel. He was just within arm’s reach.

“So what’s embarrassing?” Ithuriel asked.

Maybe things were different on Earth. Maybe it was normal here to make art of one’s enemy. It wasn’t that she was beautiful, per se. It was just that she inspired awe, even in greatest panic or deepest stupor. The resplendence of her storms, the arc of her wings, the crackle of lightning in her eyes and sweep of her sword. The seesaw between the murderous force he knew she was and the melancholy, borderline friendly demeanor she displayed. It stuck in his head, his source of greatest fear and fascination on this little blue planet.

“You don’t need to give me anything in return,” Ghast said, finally relenting and folding the shawl. “But I’d like to embroider your image one day.”

“My image?” She blinked slowly at him, but the corners of her eyes crinkled just a little when he said she could have the shawl. It wasn’t a smile, but it had the spirit of a smile. “You could do it now, if you wanted. I smoked a lot, so I’m not going anywhere for a while.”

“Not yet. I don’t have good enough thread.” Ghast dragged his fingers over the shawl’s weave. They made good thread in the human communities down the mountain, but not good enough. Not  _ fine _ enough. Not in enough colors to catch her glow.

And even if he had the thread, he didn’t know her well enough yet. Not well enough to catch her and hold her in cloth.

He held out the shawl to her. She didn’t smile, but her eyes were soft as she accepted it. “Thank you. Are you sure I can’t give you anything in exchange?”

“Yes. I’m sure.”

Ithuriel wrapped her shoulders with the shawl, and it draped in front of her wings. She seemed to glow as she settled into it. Ghast had never seen an angel look so pleased.

Ghast passed her the pipe. She somehow looked even more pleased.

For a thousand years, that’s how things went. Every few years, Ithuriel would arrive and perch on her favorite rock. She’d come with a gift of chicha or opium, and occasionally a trinket she thought Ghast would like. They’d smoke and talk until the smoke dragged them under, and Ghast would wake up alone on his mountain. Ithuriel always stopped just short of letting Ghast in. He knew almost as much about her after a thousand years as he did in the beginning.

And then the pox arrived, and everything changed. 

* * *

**PRESENT** **  
** **TADFIELD**

Ghast didn’t bother paying attention to the arguing cropping up between the various divine beings and the particularly formidable human woman. He was too distracted by the crush of Ithuriel’s arm. Even when she was being affectionate, her grip was painful, firm enough to crack the joints in his back.

Something missing in his chest slid back into place.

“Where are we?” she asked, squinting at the sky. Ghast had magicked away the physical withdrawal symptoms, but there was no magicking away two hundred years’ worth of disorientation.

“England.” Ghast squirmed in her grip, wiggling his arm free so he could skim his fingers along her damaged topside coverts. Nestor had really bitten a chunk out of her. He coaxed the wound to scab under his fingers.

“England? Awful place.”

Ghast hummed in agreement as Ithuriel struggled to put her thoughts together.

“Why are we all here?”

There were a lot of questions folded up in there. Some were bearable to answer, some weren’t.

“Aziraphale called all the Principalities and Crowley called all the demons on earth.” Ghast pulled Ithuriel into a sitting position. He absently combed her ruffled feathers with his fingers, frowning at the clumps of icy snow that clung to her wings. Ithuriel barely seemed to notice. She was focusing on the demons and angels arguing with each other and with the stalwart human woman (“You can’t just order eight divine beings to come back to your--” “Well it seems I just did, didn’t I?”), a confused furrow bisecting her brow. “Both of them defected from Heaven and Hell. I think they want us all to join them.”

“They what?”

Ithuriel squinted at Aziraphale, who was in the process of forcing himself in between the human woman and Stygian, the only one among them who seemed to have the energy to get worked up to blows. Obviously, Stygian hadn’t changed all that much in two thousand years.

“Armageddon. Crowley was supposed to raise the Antichrist, but instead he teamed up with the angel and they convinced the Antichrist not to end the world. Now the end times didn’t happen and no one knows what they’re supposed to do.” 

Ithuriel’s expression was hard to read, mainly because two hundred years on the nod left cobwebs in the brain and it was hard to have a readable expression when one didn’t have the headspace to have a readable feeling.

With a grunt, Ithuriel rolled to her feet.

“You shouldn’t stand so fast!” Ghast grabbed her arm just before she toppled, but she did the brunt of the work steadying herself. If she hadn’t, she probably would have crushed him, yet he still held on to her arm. Even now, even barely woken from sleep, she was larger than life.

“Aziraphale!” Thunder rumbled in Ithuriel’s voice. Silence dropped on the clearing. “Crowley!”

Crowley struggled to keep his usual cool, but he looked like Death itself had called his name, and it might as well have. The Guardian of the Eastern Gate had such wide eyes when he looked at Ithuriel. Wide, frightened eyes, even as he fought to keep his voice even when he said, “Yes, Ithuriel?”

Ithuriel let go of Ghast and staggered towards them. Her wings were ragged and gleamed with her coagulating blood, her feet bare and chapping in the snow, but she was still the biggest of them all, and she cast the widest shadow as she stalked forward.

Nestor shrank away, far away, knees bent and ready to sprint despite her injuries. Stygian’s fingers closed around the conjured pipe he’d left on the table. The Rainmaker bit her lip, eyes darting between Aziraphale and Ithuriel. The Guardian of the Northern Gate’s face remained impassive, but their knuckles were white at their sides. Even the humans seemed to have picked up on the atmosphere, tense like deer who just smelled a predator in the wind.

“Ghast told me you two defected.”

Crowley shot a look at Ghast that probably would have been murderous if his eyes were visible. Ghast shrugged at him. What else could he have done?

“Now Ithuriel,” Aziraphale held out his hands. His voice wobbled on the last syllable as he edged closer to Crowley, like somehow their arms touching would keep them both safe. “I can exp—”

Aziraphale cut himself off as Ithuriel slammed her hands down on his and Crowley’s shoulders.

“Does this mean you two are finally together?” Ithuriel asked.

Aziraphale’s mouth fell open. Crowley sputtered out, “What?”

“Together. Dating? Courting?” Ithuriel wasn’t smiling, but the corners of her eyes were soft. “I mean officially. Not that secret… whatever you were doing.”

Now it was Aziraphale’s turn to sputter. “You  _ knew? _ ”

“Of course.” Ithuriel’s wings wobbled with her shrug. “You’re really not subtle, Aziraphale. Everyone knew.”

“Everyone did  _ not _ know!” Ion said, face cracking into open shock. “It was a scandal, Ithuriel! Unheard of! Gabriel called an all staff meeting to address it! An  _ all staff meeting! _ ” 

“Gabriel is a dramatic bastard and you know it.” Ithuriel did not let up her grip on Crowley and Aziraphale, but she did frown at Ion. “Didn’t you see them flirting on the walls of Eden? They were there for hours after the humans were banished.”

“ _ No! _ ” Ion said. (“It wasn’t really flirting,” Aziraphale protested. “It kind of was,” corrected Crowley.) “No one did except you, apparently.”

“Really? Huh. With observational skills like that, no wonder Armageddon didn’t happen. Anyway, I’m happy for you.” Ithuriel gave them both solid pats on the shoulders before letting go, hobbling towards the humans and tucking her wounded wings into the ether. Ghast, somehow well beyond any kind of surprise at this point, scurried to follow her. “I don’t know what you’re all doing, but I’m in a lot of pain, so I’m going with the humans and licking my wounds at their house.”

“ _ You’re _ in a lot of dain?” Nestor grumbled, bracing herself against a tree. She didn’t seem alright to walk, really. Neither did Esper, if Ghast were being honest.

The fight had been everything Ghast was afraid of, short of brutal destruction with a holy water-imbued sword. He hadn’t seen divine battle like that since the Fall. But one big thing was different.

Ghast glanced over his shoulder at Aziraphale and Crowley, who’d managed to shut their mouths and cast meaningful looks at each other. Both of them looked worse for wear, but not nearly as injured as the others. They were weak flyers, obviously, and yet they held their own against Ithuriel herself. They flew like they always knew where the other was.

“I’m not leaving this miserable country without an explanation,” Ion grumbled, snapping their fingers. Their wings disappeared, the snow and ice receded, and their suit and hair redid themselves to perfection. Even so, they leaned on a conjured white cane to follow after Ithuriel and Ghast, jerking their head for Aziraphale and Crowley to come along. Crowley bristled at the gesture, but Aziraphale seemed happy to comply, relieved that the meeting wasn’t falling apart just with some minor brawling.

The formidable human woman stood aside to let them walk, her hands on her hips as she looked at Esper, Nestor, and Stygian, still staring after the retreating divine beings. “Are you all coming?”

“…I guess if all the other angels are going?” Esper said, gesturing helplessly at the retreating backs before snapping her fingers. One white cane with metallic gold detailing appeared in her hand. A black cane with blue detailing appeared leaning next to Nestor. As Esper hobbled after the angels, Nestor glared at her back, then at the black cane, then back at Esper before cursing and taking the cane, tucking in her wings and shuffling after them.

Which left Stygian.

“Why should I go?” Stygian asked, already sounding cranky.

“Don’t be coy,” Ion said without even looking over their shoulder. “This is the most fun you’ve had in a century.”

Stygian glared. Ghast didn’t have to watch to know he’d follow anyway.

“Opium would clean us all up,” Ithuriel said lightly, holding out her arm.

“You’ve had enough,” Ghast said, taking her arm in his and glaring. “Besides, I’m trying to quit.”

“Quit? Why?”

“You really need to ask that?” Ghast looked down at her bare feet. The cold would split open her skin soon enough. He snapped his fingers and warm deerskin moccasins with beaded lightning bolts wrapped around her feet. Her shawl of white wings and lightning, discarded in her casket, appeared around her shoulders.

Despite the lack of drugs, Ithuriel’s eyes brightened as she wrapped her shawl tightly around herself. “Tell me you at least have something else.”

“Well… chicha, obviously. And humans have made a lot of new things since you went to sleep. I think you’ll like ecstasy.”

“What’s ecstasy?”

“It’s a new thing they made. It makes you want to cuddle and love everyone.”

“Sounds good. I’ll try that.”

All the angels looked at Ithuriel in mute horror. Ghast didn’t have the heart to deny her, even if it probably wasn’t a great idea to do drugs with a bunch of people inches from starting another fight. She needed something to quiet the screams in her head, and Ghast had promised her a long time ago that he’d always give her what she needed.

MDMA was different from opium, anyway. It didn’t slow the world down until it stopped; just made it warmer and took off the edges. Besides, she’d need something to ease her way back into the world of the waking. He didn’t want her to be so miserable that she went to sleep again. He never wanted her to sleep again.

Ghast opened up his trench coat, holding it close enough to hide a particular embroidered patch over his breast but revealing a menagerie of drugs in carefully labeled and weighed bags sewn to the lining.

“Are you just a walking pharmacy?” Crowley asked, a mix of distaste and demonic admiration in his voice. Drug dealing was lazy demonic work, Ghast knew, but at least he was meticulous and organized about his dealing, and his drugs were never cut.

“Do you have any meth?” Stygian asked, looking the inside of Ghast’s coat up and down as he snapped open the MDMA bag.

Ion turned to furrow their brow at Stygian. “You don’t use methamphetamine.”

“Not myself. But I like to put two tweakers in a room with some of it and see what they do to each other.”

Ion nodded in understanding. Everyone else grimaced.

(The meek human man leaned in to whisper to the formidable woman, “Are you sure we should be bringing these people into our home?” The woman just nodded grimly.)

“I don’t sell meth,” Ghast said, grimacing as he plucked a small tab with a lightning imprint on it, giving it to Ithuriel before taking out another and offering it to the group. Crowley accepted it with a shrug, prompting a disapproving look from Aziraphale, but Crowley put it in his pocket instead of his mouth. “Not after a human stole a horse and ran it through my window. They tried attacking me with a machete because they thought I stole the crystal they already smoked. The horse was so scared it trampled my loom.”

Ithuriel paused before she popped the pill in her mouth. “Were you okay?”

Something about the way her eyes sharpened, alert like they hadn’t been since the last time Ghast needed her help, warmed something in his chest. He took one last pill, this one with a spider imprint, and knocked it back. “He didn’t have a crucifix, so I was fine. I just turned his machete into an animal balloon. I was more worried about the horse.”

“A human attacked you with a machete and all you did was turn it into an animal balloon?” Stygian had that look on his face again, that look like Ghast was a smear on his shoe. “Embarrassing.”

Ghast thumbed the hem of his trench coat as he closed it again, careful not to show the embroidered patch sewn inside lining. It had been so long since he’d spoken to another demon in person—over two thousand years now—that he’d forgotten the way they’d make him feel, how he was supposed to talk with them. Ithuriel looked down at him as she swallowed her pill, one eyebrow arched, but Ghast shrugged away the unspoken offer.

“He didn’t need my help destroying his life. He was doing it all by himself.”

“Seems the properly demonic move to me,” Crowley said, sounding downright approving. Ghast looked at him, all his eyes wide. He hadn’t expected the actual Serpent of Eden to say a word for him. “Think of it, right? Here you are, with a human mad enough to break into someone’s home and try to kill them over some drug-induced psychosis. Psychosis that he  _ knowingly _ gave himself, and will  _ knowingly _ give himself again before long. You get more net evil in the world if you keep him around to mess things up for other people, right?”

“But,” Aziraphale interjected, “he has a chance to redeem himself as long as he lives.”

“That’s the point, isn’t it?” Crowley said with the air of someone who’d had this conversation many times with Aziraphale and never tired of it. “Hell only gets his soul if he has the chance to redeem himself and he doesn’t take it. So the best way to secure his soul for Hell is give him the choice. And chances are that he’ll dive headfirst down below, and he’ll drag a handful of other sad sacks with him.”

Stygian wrinkled his nose, turning his ‘you’re a dead bug to me’ sneer on Crowley. “Seems like an excuse to not get your hands dirty.”

“Just adnit you like killing hunans,” Nestor said, waving dismissively at Stygian as she hobbled on her cane. She and Esper, the most heavily wounded, kept up the rear of the group. “Killing isn’t the dest way to do our job.”

“Oh, you think you’re a jaw-dropping temptress, Nestor?” Stygian asked, and now it was Nestor’s turn to be sneered at. “I’m sure humans fall all over themselves to hear you carry on.”

“You det they do. You know why? I don’t walk around looking honeless.”

Esper leaned forward towards Aziraphale and Ion. Considering how squished together their group was, it didn’t really do much to keep her whisper a secret. “I feel like we shouldn’t be hearing this.”

“Oh, who ethen cares?” Nestor said, throwing up her hands. “Has anyone gotten instructions ‘rom their othice since the adocalyse? Rules don’t natter anynore.”

“Rules  _ always _ matter,” Esper said, frowning pointedly at Nestor.

“Yeah, I can tell ‘rom watching all these losers,” Nestor said, gesturing broadly at the angel and demon couple who defected, the angel and demon currently getting high, the two angels hobbling on canes and the demon grumbling about murdering his colleagues.

“So… are you all…” the meek human dared to speak, gesturing vaguely at them. “Are you all… you know, from Eden? Like in the Bible?”

“Oh, how frightfully rude of us,” Aziraphale said, seeming to come to life at the implication of impoliteness. “We should introduce our colleagues. Well, former colleagues?” He looked at Ithuriel and Ion. He had big, expressive eyes, Ghast noted. Eyes that somehow looked hopeful and pained at the same time. Ion looked at the sky with a scowl and Ithuriel’s eyes softened in a sort of, ‘I don’t know what’s happening but you’re doing great’ way. 

“This is Ithuriel, who guarded the Western Gate of Eden,” Aziraphale said, gesturing to Ithuriel. She gave a little wave as her pupils expanded. “She’s been responsible for overlooking the Americas since the beginning. This is Ion, who guarded the Northern Gate of Eden--” Ion gave a terse nod of acknowledgement. “--and they have been responsible for overlooking Asia and Oceania since the beginning. I believe they’re responsible for protecting Russia from a few winter invasions?” 

Aziraphale looked hopefully at Ion. It almost made Ghast want to whisper that, no, it was obvious the North Wind was mad and Aziraphale should really stop trying to smooth it over like this. Ghast kept his thoughts to himself. 

“They invaded during winter. They were idiots,” Ion said, voice as cold as the sort of snow drift that would stop an army in its tracks. 

“Right then,” Aziraphale said, forcing a smile even as a chilly wind breezed over all of them. “And this is Esper--” he gestured to Esper, who seemed to have no idea how she wanted to respond so she just weakly waved. “--she has been responsible for overlooking Africa ever since the Guardian of the Southern Gate, well…” 

“Died. He died,” Ion said. 

The human woman’s eyes softened, and the human man whispered, “I’m so sorry.” Ghast rubbed his arms as the temperature cooled further. Ithuriel wrapped a warm arm around his shoulders. 

“Yes. He did, rather,” Aziraphale said, light in his eyes dimming before he looked at Crowley. Ghast watched from the corner of his tertiary eyes as Crowley brushed his fingers against Aziraphale’s knuckles. The temperature in the air warmed again.

“As for everyone from Hell--” Crowley pointed at Ghast, “drug dealing spider,” Ghast nodded with a grimace and Crowley pointed at Nestor, “fish with a speech impediment--” Nestor flipped Crowley off as he pointed at Stygian, “and sadist goat. There. You’ve met everyone.”

“Well, it’s lovely to meet you,” the human man said. No one graced that baldfaced lie with a response. 

Even with all their wings tucked away, they were a sight to see marching through Tadfield as dawn graced the horizon. A cluster of bedraggled people of varied ambiguous ages and wildly differing fashion senses, limping along towards the edge of town. The house in question looked very charming and quaint on the outside, but the wards were so old and thick that they hissed as Ghast approached. They hissed of salt and iron and faith, carving the earth around the house and dampening all magic and miracle within.

Ghast stopped short at the gate. So did all the other demons, but Ithuriel only paid attention to Ghast, and Aziraphale only paid attention to Crowley.

“We can’t go in there,” Ghast said, shuddering at the hiss.

“It’s the horseshoe,” Crowley said, grimacing as he pointed to a horseshoe hanging over the door. It looked like it had burned an imprint on the threshold already. “It’ll burn us if we try to cross.”

“Well, that’s easy to deal with,” Ithuriel said before marching through the lawn and yanking the horseshoe off the doorjamb with her bare hands. The hissing subsided at least somewhat, promising no power but also no burns. Ithuriel spun to face the humans, who looked put off now that they had an angel tearing things off their wall. “I’ll put it back after we leave.”

The formidable human woman seemed to accept this grudgingly as an answer. She stepped up to the door, gesturing for everyone to come inside. “Welcome to our home. You won’t be able to do any magic or violence within the wards, so here’s your chance to clear the air. Don’t break anything if you can help it.”

The meek man, looking more and more like he wanted to crawl away to a nice café or something, ducked inside with a mumbled, “I’ll go put the kettle on.”

* * *

So, sitting with a cup of cocoa on Anathema Device’s couch, Aziraphale took inventory.

He and Crowley successfully got all their Earth-bound colleagues in one room without killing anyone. That alone was probably worthy of celebration, though Aziraphale was disappointed in the state of his brethren. Ion, who had always been a bit stand offish but nonetheless meant well, seemed to have frozen their heart solid to anyone but Ithuriel, and looked ready to shut Ithuriel out too. Esper, who Aziraphale really only remembered from before Eden, seemed liable to report everything straight back to Gabriel as soon as this was over. To top it off, Ithuriel was apparently now a drug addict enabled by a demon who walked with so many pills it was a wonder he didn’t rattle.

Ithuriel, for her part, sat at the kitchen table, her wings spread out behind her for Ghast to carefully groom and wick away dried blood. The demon worked methodically, his brow furrowed in concentration, and Ithuriel’s pupils were the size of teacups as she smiled distantly at the wall. Ghast explained the last two centuries as he worked, but it wasn’t clear if Ithuriel really heard him. Aziraphale wanted to say that the demon had somehow tempted her to this vice and was keeping her prisoner through enabling, but Aziraphale had spent far too long with Crowley to think that demons had no feelings. The desperate, needy way he stuck to her side and tended to her every need screamed of a person afraid to lose someone.

Ion was with the only angel that had yet to draw their disapproval—Esper. They stood with her at the kitchen sink, dabbing the dried golden blood from her face and wings, revealing bigger and bigger patches where her ragged skin had been plucked bare of feathers. Ion frowned as they murmured about molting and kept dabbing, and Esper bravely didn’t flinch once while they did.

Nestor and Stygian had found their own corners of the house to lick their wounds alone. Anathema had trailed off after Stygian, probably to make sure he didn’t do something terrible to their house. Newt had scurried after Nestor, maybe hoping for some answers on who they all were while he made sure she didn’t break something.

That left Crowley and Aziraphale themselves. They also had their wings out, and now it was Crowley’s turn to frown at Aziraphale’s feathers, combing away anything that came loose with the lightning and checking for damage. Aziraphale had already used the burn cream Anathema had on hand to take care of the burns on Crowley’s chest and stomach, but he knew better than to try miracling away damage done by another angel, much less in a place where miracles were strangled.

It was a new thing, tending to each other like this. Running fingers through wings, rubbing ointment, wrapping bandages. They just haven’t been in such an intense fight that couldn’t be miracle away before. It should feel wrong to do this in front of other people, to take this step in this fledgling part of their relationship, but it was so natural. So normal. Like the Fall never happened, like they were two angels grooming each other in a group of other angels doing the same.

All the groups they had split up into were at least five feet away from each other. The distance yawned wider and wider with the relative silence. Aziraphale remembered when they were all friends—or at least, when he was friends with Ion and Ithuriel. They were the ones who understood humanity as much as he did, who commiserated with him when Gabriel just didn’t understand their job. It was Ithuriel who told off Ion and Malthael from questioning Aziraphale’s missing sword, who never asked him to fight. It was Ion who gave Aziraphale their shoulder as he wept over Malthael’s ashes for five months, who brought him to Rome to toast their friend and didn’t leave his side until there were no tears left.

When had that stopped?

“So,” Crowley said, raising his voice just enough to stop the little murmuring in the room. “How long has  _ this, _ ” he gestured to Ithuriel and Ghast, “been going on?”

Ithuriel turned her vacant smile on Crowley. Aziraphale got the impression that she didn’t smile much these days, and he wasn’t sure if whatever this was counted. “You need to be more specific.”

“You know, this.” Crowley gestured at them again unhelpfully. “I’m asking how long you’ve been dating.”

“We’re not together like you and Aziraphale.” Ithuriel looked over her wing to Ghast, who was still working carefully on her feathers. “How long have we been friends, do you think?”

Ghast hummed in thought, tugging a loose feather out of Ithuriel’s wing. “Around a millennia and a half, I guess?”

“You thought I was going to kill you for at least a thousand years.”

“I can think you’ll kill me and still be your friend.”

“Mmm. And I’m grateful.” She leaned up against Ghast, humming and closing her eyes. “I love you.”

Ghast glanced at Crowley, shrugging. “The drugs are talking.” Ghast undid Ithuriel’s braids, combing through her hair with his fingers.

“But I do.”

“You love everyone on ecstasy.”

Aziraphale exchanged looks with Crowley. “Ithuriel,” Aziraphale said carefully, “how long have you been, ah… indulging?”

“With drugs?” She turned that vacant smile to Aziraphale now. It was almost worse than Gabriel’s condescending smile. It was like someone had closed curtains behind Ithuriel’s eyes, and he couldn’t see into her head anymore. “Two thousand years, give or take. Alcohol for longer.”

“That long?” Ion said, breaking their silence to frown at her, even as he dabbed at Esper’s wings. “How haven’t we noticed?”

“I thought I was good at pretending whenever we ran into each other, but we’ve just gone over everyone’s observational skills.” Ithuriel shrugged, still smiling. “But we don’t run into each other much anymore. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen you and Aziraphale in the last two thousand years.”

Aziraphale flinched internally, and he could tell from Ion’s tight-lipped expression that they were feeling much the same. Maybe that was how their friendships degraded so thoroughly. Just simple time and neglect.

“Was it because of Malthael? I told you, it wasn’t—”

“Stop talking about it like it’s a problem,” Ithuriel said, cutting Ion’s hesitant reassurance off. The mention of Malthael’s name was like a hand around Aziraphale’s throat. “Drugs aren’t a problem if you can snap your fingers and be sober. Anyway, that’s not why we’re here.” 

She gestured vaguely at Aziraphale. “You have all the Principalities in one room and none of us are going anywhere. Give your pitch.”

Aziraphale and Crowley exchanged another look. They’d rehearsed how they’d sell this to everyone, of course, but that had been under the assumption that they’d all be mostly sober and not mauled by an angel.

But now they were all torn apart and burning from the understanding that none of them were friends, they were barely acquaintances, and Aziraphale wasn’t sure he knew how to speak to them anymore.

“…I love Earth. I know you love it too.” Aziraphale knew that much. Ion and Ithuriel, at least, were designed with Earth in mind. They had to love it. “And I truly believe that the Almighty loves her Creation as well. That’s why I wanted to stop the apocalypse, and that’s why I’m afraid of Heaven and Hell restarting it.”  _ It’s only a matter of time before the big one, _ Crowley had said in those blissful moments that it seemed like it was all over. _ They’ll lick their wounds and come back. All of them against Earth. _ Heaven and Hell wanted their war, and no one knew when they would realize that they didn’t need an Antichrist to whip out their weapons and destroy the Earth themselves. Crowley and Aziraphale alone would not have much of a chance against the entire host of Heaven and Hell once that happened. “That’s why I want your help.”

“Aziraphale…” Ion sighed, shaking their head as they stopped dabbing Esper’s wings. “I understand. I do.”

They leaned against Anathema’s kitchen sink, bracing themselves with the palms of their hands. Usually, they seemed so cool and collected. Now they just seemed tired.

“We’re meant to love. We’re angels. But you can’t love like humans do. You can’t do that to yourself.” Ion gestured to the windows, to the rolling garden and the humans outside waking up and starting their day. There was a flicker in their eyes. Something that reminded Aziraphale of the kind looks they gave him in Eden. “For us… everything we have ever loved will be gone one day. Everything except Her. When you love anything, you have to do it while accepting it will die and hold it at arm’s length. You’ll just destroy yourself otherwise.”

“So, what?” Crowley took his fingers from Aziraphale’s wings to spread his hands out dramatically. “We just let the world burn because it’d probably go out sometime? We just don’t bother trying? Do you do that with humans you like? ‘Sorry dear, I know that you’re having a heart attack and I could snap my fingers to save you, but you’d die at some point anyway so ta-ta.’”

The softness in Ion’s eyes disappeared as they frowned disapprovingly. Aziraphale expected them to dismiss talking to a demon offhand, but instead they said, “You let things die when they’re meant to die. It’s not for us to decide these things, and it’s selfish to keep something when its time has come.  _ You both _ were selfish by betraying your people.”

“To be selfish means that you only care about your own pain,” Ithuriel said, drumming her fingers on the kitchen table as Ghast wove complicated braids into her hair. “But I don’t think the humans wanted to die.”

“But God wanted them to,” Esper said.

“Did She really?” Aziraphale asked, giving his wings a little ruffle. “I didn’t Fall. She didn’t consider defying the Great Plan to be rebellion. What if she had a different plan all along? What if she wanted someone to disobey?”

“Wanted someone to disobey?” Ithuriel’s eyes were on him again. Her smile was gone. “Interesting thought.”

“But that’s crazy,” Esper said. “Don’t you remember the Fall? She didn’t seem to be a fan of disobeying then.”

“Wasn’t She?” Crowley leaned forward, clasping his hands between his knees. Aziraphale knew that posture. It was his posture when he was preparing the killing blow in his persuasion. “When you think about it, an awful lot of the Plan hinges on there being two sides, doesn’t it?”

“You’re not suggesting…”

“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m saying that She planned the Fall.” Crowley waved off Esper’s, Ion’s, and even Ghast’s scandalized looks. “No, I’m not saying She plotted with Lucifer. I’m saying She knew what he’d get up to and She let it happen because it needed to happen for humans to have free will. You don’t have the free will to do good if you don’t also have someone showing you how to do bad.”

“Whether the Fall was planned or not,” Ion cut in, eyes flinty now and shoulders tense, “it doesn’t mean that protecting Earth from destruction is part of Her plan.”

“Ah! But Aziraphale here didn’t Fall even when he went flying headfirst into the Great Plan.” Crowley said, gesturing dramatically at Aziraphale. Aziraphale indulged him by rustling his wings again. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Maybe, with all that effort the Almighty put into giving us love and free will, She wants to see us use it.”

“But why would She tell us to do something She didn’t want us to do?” Esper said, voice pitching upwards.

“Because it doesn’t mean anything if we do the right thing because She told us to.” Ithuriel kept smoothing her hands over the table. Aziraphale couldn’t for the life of him figure out why. Maybe for the same reason Ghast kept undoing her braids and redoing them in increasingly complicated patterns. “There’s no sacrifice or bravery in doing what you’re told.”

“How can you say that?” Esper said, voice thin. “Doing what you’re told is hard. She asks hard things of all of us. It takes grace and bravery to obey. You of all people—”

“ _ Don’t finish that sentence. _ ”

Ithuriel’s cloudy, far away voice suddenly was there, in the room with thunder. The cutlery rattled in their drawers. Her dinner plate eyes bore into Esper. Her fingers curled into fists. Her skin was red. “Don’t fucking finish that sentence.”

Esper opened her mouth, then closed it. “I…” 

Ithuriel forced her hands to relax. Ghast pulled another pill from his trench coat, crushing it under the heel of his hand on the table. “Dab that on your gum.”

“Do  _ not, _ ” Ion said, nostrils flaring. “You’re intoxicated enough as it is!”

“I love you, Ion. I do, drugs or no drugs.” Ithuriel licked her finger and pressed it into the pastel pink powder. “But I’m never intoxicated enough.” She smeared the inside of her gum with powder.

Ion heaved a sigh, scrubbing their face with their hands. God, but they looked so tired. “Obviously, it was a mistake to come here.” They buttoned their waistcoat over the burns on their chest before grabbing their suit jacket from the coat rack. Ithuriel didn’t even react. “I wish I could say that I enjoyed the reunion, but frankly, I expect everyone except Esper will be dead before we meet again. At least I’ll know you all died by your own fault.”

“Ion, please, I know that you’re angry,” Aziraphale said, rising from his seat. “I understa--” 

“No, you don’t understand, Aziraphale,” Ion said, their voice flint as they slid their jacket on. “None of us ever betrayed you.”

Aziraphale’s throat dried.

“You know, even for an angel, you’re a cold bastard,” Crowley drawled, which was good, because Aziraphale found himself at a loss for how to respond.

“And for a demon, you talk a lot about serving God’s plan. But I accepted my role a long time ago, and I’m only disappointed that you two have strayed so far, and perhaps that I didn’t do enough to stop you,” Ion said, gesturing to Aziraphale and Ithuriel. Ithuriel smiled vacantly again, like Ion had already walked away long ago and she was only pleasantly surprised that they were still there. “I’m going home.”

And then the pressure in the air changed.

Everyone felt it. Everyone paused to check the air, even Ghast and Ithuriel, who were quite distracted by braiding hair. Fumbling footsteps came down the stairs.

“Archangel Gadriel.” Nestor slid into the kitchen with Anathema at her heels. 

“The man from the airbase,” Anathema said, bracing herself on the wall to catch her breath. “The one with the purple eyes.” 

“Gadriel’s at the door.”

Someone knocked on the door and the wards hummed with a new visitor.

“Fuck,” said Crowley. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed. Please leave a kudos or a comment if you are so inclined.
> 
> I have a tumblr called themadqueenmab. Feel free to contact me, or just browse my blog for the various drabble-y fics I put up there and don't get around to putting here. Thanks to AJ and Dex for looking this over for me!


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